then I took a long drink of it, and then I took another.
I didn't seem to get drunk, I went mad. I saw some magnificent visions,
they seemed to be all round the room, nickering like the Biograph, then,
all of a sudden, they vanished, and I don't remember anything more
until I woke and found Koda standing beside me. Now was that the sort of
thing that used to happen to my mother?"

"It was," replied his father, "exactly, and when she came to her senses
after one of her bouts, she used to implore me to keep the smell, even
the sight, of liquor away from her. Of course I did. I gave up drinking
myself, and what I had in the house for friends I kept constantly under
lock and key. It seemed to be successful for a time, and then she began
to get liquor from somewhere else. I never could find out how or where
she did it. I had her watched, but it was no use. Weeks would pass and
she would be perfectly sober. Then, without the slightest warning, she
would go out for a walk or to pay some calls and come back, not drunk,
but getting drunk.

"We used to have some terrible scenes then, as you may believe. I
dismissed four butlers because she had either bribed or frightened them
into giving her the keys of the wine cellar. I had the best medical men
in India for her, and at last I got her to consent to go into a
Sanitorium. That, however, was merely a blind to keep my suspicions
quiet. It was only a few days before she was to have gone there that she
disappeared."

"And you never had any suspicion about the scoundrel that she went away
with? I expect if the truth was known, she got the liquor secretly
through him after you had stopped it. I am beginning already to have a
presentiment that I shall meet that man some day, and if I do, may God
have mercy on him, for I won't!"

"No, no, Vane, don't say that, my boy! Remember what is
written--'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.' Whoever he is his sin will
find him out, if it has not done so already."

Sir Arthur spoke with the absolute conviction of a deeply religious man.
He believed his own words honestly; and yet, if he could have seen how
his own prophecy was to be fulfilled, he would have given his right
hand, nay, he would even have shaken hands with the man who had so
deeply wronged him, rather than that they should have had so terrible a
fulfilment.

Indeed, even while he was speaking the wheels of Fate had already begun
to revolve.

When Carol and Dora returned from the