"Ah, what is there to explain, Aunt Elizabeth? Except that you have been a thousand times kinder to me than I dreamed before. Why, I--I actually thought that you were rather honored by having a Colby under your roof. I really felt that I was bestowing something of a favor on you!" "Terry, sit down!" He sank into a chair slowly. And she sat on the arm of it with her mournful eyes on his face. "Whatever your name may be, that doesn't change the man who wears the name." He laughed softly. "And you've been teaching me steadily for twenty-four years that blood will tell? You can't change like this. Oh, I understand it perfectly. You determined to make me over. You determined to destroy my heritage and put the name of the fine old Colbys in its place. It was a brave thing to try, and all these years how you must have waited, and waited to see how I would turn out, dreading every day some outbreak of the bad blood! Ah, you have a nerve of steel, Aunt Elizabeth! How have you endured the suspense?" She felt that he was mocking her subtly under this flow of compliment. But it was the bitterness of pain, not of reproach, she knew. She said: "Why didn't you let me come up with you? Why didn't you send for me?" "I've been busy doing a thing that no one could help me with. I've been burning my dreams." He pointed to a smoldering heap of ashes on the hearth. "Terry!" "Yes, all the Colby pictures that I've been collecting for the past fifteen years. I burned 'em. They don't mean anything to anyone else, and certainly they have ceased to mean anything to me. But when I came to Anthony Colby--the eighteen-twelve man, you know, the one who has always been my hero--it went pretty hard. I felt as if--I were burning my own personality. As a matter of fact, in the last couple of hours I've been born over again." Terry paused. "And births are painful, Aunt Elizabeth!" At that she cried out and caught his hand. "Terry dear! Terry dear! You break my heart!" "I don't mean to. You mustn't think that I'm pitying myself. But I want to know the real name of my father. He must have had some name other than Black Jack. What was it?" "Are you going to gather his memory to your heart, Terry?" "I am going to find something about him that I can be proud of. Blood will tell. I know that I'm not all bad, and there must have been good in Black Jack. I want to know all about him. I want to know about--his crimes." He labored through a fierce moment of silent struggle while her heart went helplessly out to him. "Because--I had a hand in every one of those crimes! Everything that he did is something that I might have done under the same temptation." "But you're not all your father's son. You had a mother. A dear, sweet- faced girl--" "Don't!" whispered Terry. "I suppose he broke--her heart?" "She was a very delicate girl," she said after a moment. "And now my father's name, please?"