all. I went back and sat up
the whole night, I needn't tell you Vane what my thoughts were. She
didn't come. She never came.

"A month afterwards I got a letter from her written from Bombay. She
confessed that for over a year she had been deceiving me; that another
man had stolen her love from me; that she could never face me or look
upon you again, and that was all. She gave no address, no sign that I
could trace her by. If she had done I would have forgiven her and asked
her to come back for your sake. But it was over ten years before I saw
her again, and then it was in a house in a wretched street in Paris.

"Then she was a drunkard, a hopeless drunkard, lost to all sense and
shame. She had taken my name again and was making it infamous, and for
your sake I was forced to take some decided steps. I took proceedings in
the French Courts, and got authority to confine her in an asylum for
inebriates, and she is there now, almost an imbecile."

"And what about Carol?" said Vane, in a hard, strained voice, "doesn't
she know who her father is, and couldn't you have got a divorce?"

"Carol does not know for certain who her father is," said Sir Arthur.
"There was someone who went about the Continent a good deal with her
mother when she was very young, and she thinks that he was. It is quite
possible that he may have been the scoundrel, whoever he was, who took
her away from Simla. As for the divorce, of course I could have got one,
but I had no desire to marry again, and I preferred to let the thing
rest as it was, rather than drag our name through the cesspool of the
Divorce Court and the newspapers. Everybody was very good to me, and in
time I lived it down and it was forgotten. In fact, I suppose if it
hadn't been for that chance meeting of yours last night, it might never
have been heard of again."

"Then that," said Vane, "is, I suppose, the secret of my drinking the
whiskey last night, and the explanation of the light which Carol saw in
my eyes when I had drunk too much champagne. My blood is poisoned, and
so, when I've drunk a certain amount, the smell of alcohol is
irresistible. There's one thing perfectly certain, I don't like whiskey
and I never have liked it, and I'm quite sure I never wanted it less
than I did last night; and yet when I smelt it, the smell somehow seemed
to get up into my brain and force me to drink it.

"I tried my best to resist it. Honestly I did, dad, but it was no use. I
tasted it, and