Perhaps you might have thought so, too, glancing into that lofty
chamber, with its glowing hangings of ruby and gold, its exquisite
pictures, its inlaid tables, its twinkling chandelier, its perfumed
warmth, and glitter, and luxury.

But Carl Walraven, lying back in a big easy-chair, in slippers and
dressing-gown, smoking his costly cheroots, looked out at the dismal
evening with the blackest of bitter, black scowls.

"Confound the weather!" muttered Mr. Walraven, between strong, white
teeth. "Why the deuce does it always rain on the twenty-fifth of
November? Seventeen years ago, on the twenty-fifth of this horrible
month, I was in Paris, and Miriam was--Miriam be hanged!" He stopped
abruptly, and pitched his cigar out of the window. "You've turned over a
new leaf, Carl Walraven, and what the demon do you mean by going back to
the old leaves? You've come home from foreign parts to your old and
doting mother--I thought she would be in her dotage by this time--and
you're a responsible citizen, and an eminently rich and respectable man.
Carl, my boy, forget the past, and behave yourself for the future; as
the copy-books say: 'Be virtuous and you will be happy.'"

He laughed to himself, a laugh unpleasant to hear, and taking up another
cigar, went on smoking.

He had been away twenty years, this Carl Walraven, over the world,
nobody knew where. A reckless, self-willed, headstrong boy, he had
broken wild and run away from home at nineteen, abruptly and without
warning. Abruptly and without warning he had returned home, one fine
morning, twenty years after, and walking up the palatial steps, shabby,