The gentlemen entered the drawing-room, bringing a faint aroma of Andrew’s excellent cigars. The ladies’ conversation died away to the whispered ends of one or two stories too interesting to be left unfinished, and then with a deeper note and on manlier topics the flood of talk poured on again.

It had been a most successful dinner-soup excellent, fish first-rate, everything good. Of course the wines were unexceptionable, while the company recognized itself as a homogeneous specimen of all that was best in the city-with the Ramornies of Pettigrew thrown in. Here they were now, the whole twenty-two of them from old Lord Kilconquar, most eminent of judges, down to that rising young Hector Donaldson, bearing implicit testimony to the status of Andrew Walkingshaw. He stood there beside Lady Kilconquar’s chair gravely discoursing on a well-chosen topic of local interest and bending solemnly at intervals to hear her comments. You could see at once from the attitude of all who addressed him that he was recognized as far from the least distinguished member of the company. He had touched the very apex of his career.

“Hush, Andrew,” murmured his wife. “Mrs. Rivington is going to sing.”

Hector opened the piano, and Mrs. Rivington sat down and touched the keyboard. Then she looked around for silence, and it fell completely. All the eye-witnesses present are agreed that it was in the moment of this pause that the drawing-room door opened, and they heard the butler announce the name of Mr. Walkingshaw.

The company turned with one accord and beheld a tall youth, attired in tweeds, march confidently into the room. In fact, he seemed so much at home, that, though naturally surprised (especially at his unorthodox costume), they never dreamt of any but the most obvious and simple explanation. They scrutinized him as he advanced, merely wondering what cousin-or could it be brother?-he was.

“Surely that’s not Frank?” murmured Lord Kilconquar.

It certainly was not Frank; and yet it was some one who looked strangely familiar to one or two of the older people present. He made straight for Andrew, his hand outstretched.

“Don’t you know me?” he asked; and the voice recalled strange memories too.

Andrew was not altogether unprepared for some such apparition appearing some day, though scarcely on such a horribly ill-timed occasion. Somehow, he had always imagined the dread possibility as happening in his office. But he remembered exactly how he had decided to confront it. He pulled his lip hard down, his eyes contracted dangerously, and then he merely shook his head.

“What!” cried the young man, with a touching note of rebuffed affection. “Don’t you recognize your own son?”

Andrew’s brain reeled. His mouth fell open, and his stare lost all traces of formidableness.

“Father!” said the stranger in a moving voice.

Incoherently Andrew burst out.

“You-you-you’re not my son!”

His disclaimer seemed so evidently sincere that the sense of the company was already in sympathy with the victim of this outrageous intrusion, when-alas for him!-his aunt chose that fatal moment, of all others, to rush out of her chronic background.

“Andrew!” she cried, her cheeks suddenly very pink, her eyes strangely excited, her voice trembling with the fervor of her appeal. “He must be-oh, he must be! Look-look at the likeness to your father! Oh, Andrew, what if it is irregular; surely you wouldn’t deny the living image of poor Heriot!”

“By Gad! So he is,” exclaimed Lord Kilconquar.

A general murmur instinctively confirmed this verdict. They wished to be charitable-but what a family resemblance!

“I-I-I tell you it’s a put-up job!” stammered their host.

“Who put it up, father?” asked the strange youth plaintively.

Lord Kilconquar shook his head, and again the startled company followed his lead.

“Look, Andrew!” cried his aunt, pointing to a tinted photograph of James Heriot Walkingshaw at the age of twenty, which hung above the mantelpiece. “Oh, just look at the resemblance!”

The young man regarded this work of art with evident emotion.

“My sainted grandfather!” he murmured, though quite loud enough for the company to hear.

The poor lady stretched her thin clasped hands beseechingly under Andrew’s very nose.

“He says it himself-he says it himself!” she pleaded. “For Heriot’s sake, don’t disown him!”

There was a rustle of silk, decisive and ominous. It was caused by the skirt of the chaste lady of Pettigrew.

“Good-night,” she said.

She only touched her brother’s hand with the tips of her fingers, and her stony glance gave him his first clear vision of the appalling chasm that yawned beneath his feet.

“Maggie!” he besought her, “you don’t believe it?”

“Can you not disgrace yourself quietly?” she hissed, and a moment later was gone.

Andrew realized that he was already in the chasm, hurtling downwards with fearful velocity. One after another, his guests followed the example of his scandalized sister; and their host was too unmanned to hold up his head and carry off the partings with the air of injured innocence that alone might have given his reputation another (though a feeble) chance.

As they left the hang-dog figure that so lately was a respected Writer to the Signet, they said to one another that all was over socially with Andrew Walkingshaw. And it had been so public, so dramatic, that they feared-of course they hoped against hope, but still they feared that the fine old business could not but suffer too. In London one might disgrace oneself and yet retain one’s clients; but could one here? Well, anyhow, that and many other interesting aspects of the case would be debated by all Edinburgh to-morrow morning.

Meanwhile, the unhappy victim of fate was left alone with his wife, his aunt, and his long-lost offspring. A desperate gesture dismissed Miss Walkingshaw; yet, though she trembled beneath his wrathful eye, she could not refrain from beseeching him again-

“He must be, Andrew-he must be! Just compare him with the picture.”

And then she shrank out of the drawing-room.

“Leave us,” he commanded his wife.

Her pale eyes gazed on him defiantly.

“I certainly shall not. I demand a full explanation, Andrew!”

“Go away, will you!”

For answer she sat down firmly upon the sofa.

“Papa, papa, don’t be rough with her,” expostulated the youth.

Andrew confronted him indignantly.

“That’s enough of this nonsense!” he thundered. “What d’ye mean? Who are you?”

“Doesn’t the voice of nature tell you?” the youth inquired sadly.

“The voice of nature be damned!”

The young man turned to the cold lady on the sofa.

“Stepmother,” he asked, “will you protect me?”

She looked at him at first stonily, and then suddenly more kindly. He was remarkably good-looking, with such nice bright eyes, and a manner difficult to resist.

“I shall certainly see that justice is done you,” she replied.

The young man seated himself beside her and took her hand.

“Thank you,” he murmured affectionately.

Andrew swore aloud and vigorously, but the pale eyes never flinched.

“Do you mean deliberately to tell me you don’t know who this young man is?” she demanded.

Put in that form, the question made him hesitate for an instant. The hesitation did honor to his sense of veracity, but it finally cost him the remains of his character.

“You needn’t trouble to answer!” she cried. “You do know who he is. Come, you had better tell me all about it at once. I presume you have not been married previously?”

The youth spoke quickly.

“You don’t think father was so scandalous as not to marry her?”

“Did you?” she demanded.

The luckless Writer fell into the trap. It seemed to him a gleam of hope-a chance of saving his precious reputation.

“Er-ye-es,” he stammered.

“You were married?” she cried.

There was a dreadful pause, and then abruptly she demanded, “What became of her?”

A dark frown answered this pertinent inquiry. She turned to the young man.

“Do you know?”

He seemed to have some difficulty in controlling his voice as he answered-

“She lives in London.”

“Lives!” shrieked the lady. “Andrew-you are a bigamist! And I-I am not lawfully-”

She leapt up and gave him one terrible look; and before he could speak she had swept wrathfully from the room.

And then the most surprising thing occurred. Instead of continuing his filial overtures, the young man sank into the corner of the sofa and burst into peal upon peal of boyish laughter.

“Oh, my dear Andrew!” he gasped. “Oh, I can’t help it-you a bigamist! Poor respectable old blighter! I say, what a joke! Oh, Andrew, Andrew, my bonny, bonny boy!”

In silence through it all, Andrew gazed darkly down at the late Heriot Walkingshaw.