"Terry will do well enough. But wait till the pinch comes. You don't know
how he'll turn out when the rub comes. _Then_ blood will tell!"

She shrugged her shoulders angrily.

"You're simply being perverse now, Vance. At any rate, that picture is
one of Terry's old 'ancestors,' Colonel Vincent Colby, of prewar days.
Terry has discovered family resemblances, of course--same black hair,
same black eyes, and a great many other things."

"But suppose he should ever learn the truth?" murmured Vance.

She caught her breath.

"That would be ruinous, of course. But he'll never learn. Only you and I
know."

"A very hard blow, eh," said Vance, "if he were robbed of the Colby
illusion and had Black Jack put in its place as a cold fact? But of
course we'll never tell him."

Her color was never high. Now it became gray. Only her eyes remained
burning, vivid, young, blazing out through the mask of age.

"Remember you said his blood would tell before he was twenty-five; that
the blood of Black Jack would come to the surface; that he would have
shot a man?"

"Still harping on that, Elizabeth? What if he does?"