"A little wild!" Evors echoed bitterly. "I behaved in a perfectly disgraceful fashion. I degraded the old name, I made it a byword in the district. As sure as I am standing here at the present moment, I am more or less answerable for my mother's death. It is a strange thing with us Evors that all the men begin in this way. I suppose it is some taint in our blood. Up to the age of five-and-twenty, we have always been more like devils than men, and then, for the most part, we have settled down to wipe out the past and become respectable members of society. I think my father recognised that, though he was exceedingly hard and stern with me. Finally, after one more unusually disgraceful episode, he turned me out of the house, and said he hoped never to look upon my face again. I was deeply in debt, I had not a penny that I could call my own, and, finally, I drifted out to Mexico with the assistance of a boon companion. On the way out I took a solemn oath that I would do my best to redeem the past. I felt heartily ashamed of my evil ways; and for six months no one could possibly have led a purer and better life than myself. It was about this time that I became acquainted with your father and your sister Beth." Evors paused a moment and paced up and down the avenue with Vera by his side. She saw that he was disturbed about something, so that she deemed it best not to interrupt him. "It was like getting back to a better world again," Evors went on. "I believed that I had conquered myself; I felt pretty sure of it, or I would have never encouraged the friendship with your sister, which she offered me from the first. I don't know how it was or why it was that I did not see much of you about that time, but you were not in the mountains with the others." "I was down in the city," Vera explained. "There was a friend of mine who had had a long serious illness, and I was engaged in nursing her. That is the reason."