it was so long as
it was alcohol. It was the smell of it that intoxicated me first, and
when I had once smelt it I went on, till I was dead drunk, and I suppose
that is the way that you found me. That is all that I know about it. I
am horribly ashamed of myself, and I can only promise you that, if I
can help it, it will never occur again."

"Sit down, Vane, and let us talk this over," said Sir Arthur, seating
himself in the arm-chair on the other side of the fire-place. "I suppose
you thought when I came back that I was going to give you the usual sort
of lecture that a father would give his son under the circumstances.
Well, I am not going to do that. I am sorry to say that it is a great
deal more serious than that."

"What do you mean, dad?" said Vane, getting up out of the arm-chair into
which he had thrown himself, as though resigned to receive his sentence.
"More serious than that? Surely it is bad enough for a fellow to come
home as I did last night, and then get drunk on whiskey and have to be
carried to bed. There can't be anything very much worse than that."

"There might have been," said Sir Arthur, "if you had not stopped the
cab where you did. What would you say if I told you that that girl--you
remember what you said to me about her likeness to yourself--what would
you say if I were to tell you that that girl is your sister?"

"Good God! Dad, you don't mean that, do you? It can't be. I never had a
sister. You have always told me that I am the only child. Mother died
twenty years ago, didn't she? And that girl was only about nineteen. No,
you can't mean it!"

"Yes," said Sir Arthur, in a tone which seemed very strange to his son.
"I do mean it. When I told you that your mother had died a few months
after you were born, I did not tell you the truth. She died to me and to
you, but that was all. She is alive still. That girl that you drove up
in the cab with last night was her daughter, but not mine."

No more terrible words than these could have Vane turned white to his
lips as he heard them, and for a moment he looked into his father's grey
stern face with a glance that had something of hate in it. His fists
even clenched and his shoulders squared as though the impulse was on him
to raise his hands against him. But there was such an infinite sadness
in Sir Arthur's eyes and such an expression of unspeakable suffering on
his hard-set features, that as he looked at him the anger died out of
Vane's eyes an