The words might have been red-hot coals on the Duke’s lips and not have given him a greater wrench to utter. Sir Bernard Vanbrugh laid down his paper and leant back in his chair. “I cannot congratulate you on your family history,” he said gravely. “Surely, sir, you will not hold me responsible because I had an unworthy father, and have a brother who takes after him? I am not like them. Ask anyone who has ever known me, and they will tell you that my life has been absolutely free from reproach. I neither drink nor gamble; I have never indulged in any kind of vice----” The physician interrupted him with a quiet gesture. “I am not a priest, Duke, but a scientist. I am not here to deal in moral blame or praise, but to decide whether you are a man whom I can welcome as the father of my grandchildren. Your family history is against you.” “Every family has its black sheep,” the unfortunate suitor urged. “Every existing family is the result of ill-assorted marriages, brought about by any consideration rather than the desire to have healthy offspring. You must forgive my saying that Lord Alistair Stuart is a very black sheep indeed.” “Alistair is not hopeless,” said the Duke, astonished to find himself defending his brother. “He is young yet, and he may settle down and marry some respectable woman.” “Heaven forbid!” Sir Bernard Vanbrugh noted his listener’s bewilderment at this unexpected rejoinder. “The greatest service a man like your brother can render to society is to lead the life he is leading. Nature understands these things better than we do. She takes a man like that and unites him with a woman like Molly Finucane in order that the vicious strain may die out. To take your brother away and marry him to a healthy woman, in order that they might have diseased children, would be the worst of crimes.” James Stuart shuddered as he listened to the voice of the new morality preaching its relentless gospel. “But you didn’t find any strain of disease in me?” he pleaded. “These things often pass over a generation. The law of heredity is still mysterious. It is the most important of all the problems awaiting scientific solution. You ask me to take a risk--a tremendous risk. I can only promise to consider it carefully.” Of his own accord Sir Bernard added: “As far as you are personally concerned, I could not hope to meet a man to whom I should give my daughter with greater confidence. Your temperament is exactly what she needs to correct her own tendency to emotionalism. You see, I am frank with you, Duke, as frank as you have been with me. I have watched over my daughter with all the powers of observation I possess from her earliest years, and I cannot shut my eyes to her weakness.” “Miss Vanbrugh is as near perfection as any girl I have seen!” exclaimed the wooer, with unwonted enthusiasm. “If she has a weakness it is in being too ready to sacrifice herself for others.”