-it was sink or
swim now!

"I will do so. I cannot bear to see you duped by your adopted--shall I
say, son?"

"I have never held the position of father to young Morley. I've helped
him to find himself as I have many another young man. He has no reason
to dupe me. We understand each other fairly well; better, I think than
most old men and young ones."

"Exactly! That is what you think."

"It is."

"Very well, then listen. Remember I would not have come to you if I
had not had evidence. You take exception to Lans and his ways of life,
I have been informed that you have even called him a--a--libertine!"

"With modifications--yes!"

"I do not ask, Mr. Markham, that you try to withhold your judgments
until you know all the facts about my boy. You were never fair to him;
you saw him--you see him now--through his father, my poor brother!"

"Madam, for his mother's sake I have always kept in touch with his
career even when I knew he was beyond any caution or judgment of mine.
I know that he has shamefully compromised a young woman and quite
openly flaunts his relations with her by calling them some new-fangled
name. Perhaps I am a narrow-gauge man, madam. All my life I have been
obliged to travel from a certain point to a certain point--I'm made
that way. I have endeavoured to look about to help my fellow-men, when
I could in justice do so, but I have stuck to the tracks that seem to
me to lead safely through the land of my journey. I am not interested
in branch roads or sidings."

Mrs. Treadwell was a bit breathless and angry but she was too far from
shore yet to indulge in relaxation.

"Lans is not an evil fellow; he is high-minded and will prove himself
in due time. I really am only seeking to help you be patient until he
has had his opportunity, and not, in the meantime, make a fatal
mistake. A new era is about to dawn when men and women, for the good
of the race, will attack social conditions from a different plane from
what you and I have been taught to consider right. Lans is in the
vanguard of this movement--but I only implore you to give him time and
while we are waiting let me ask you this--would you be more lenient
to--to this protege of yours than you are to Lans, if I could prove to
you that he has been hiding his private life from you entirely? Has,
apparently, laid himself bare to your confidence and good-will while,
in a secret and shameful manner, he has had very disreputable relati