“But when I got back, oh, Uncle John, I was too late!—­too late to do right, even had I wished it!  I don’t know,—­I made good resolutions on my way back:  Heaven knows if I should have had strength to put them in practice.  But it was all over; not only had I lost Herbert, but he had lost himself.  The first time I saw him he was not himself,—­I might as well say it,—­he was drunk.

“There is no need of going through the rest, Uncle,—­you will not ask it.  I think I did everything I could;—­I threw away my books; I devoted myself to making his home pleasant to him; never, no, never, in my girlish days, did I take half the pains to please him that I did now to win him from himself.  I read to him, I sang to him, I filled the house with people that I knew were to his taste, I dressed for him, I let myself be admired by others that he might feel proud of me, might think me more worthy of admiration,—­but all to no purpose.  Sometimes I hoped, but more often I despaired; his fall seemed to me fearfully rapid, though now the three years seem to have been interminable.  At last I had no hope but that of concealing the truth from you all.  You thought me churlish, Kate, in my answer to your proposal to spend last winter with me?  My darling, I dared not have you in my house.  But it is over now.  I knew how that last horrible attack would end when I sent for papa.  He had gone through two before that, and the doctor told me the third would be fatal.  Poor Herbert!—­Uncle John, can I ever forgive myself?”

Alice looked up with dry and burning eyes into Uncle John’s face, over which the tears were streaming.

“My child, it is right that you should blame yourself.  What sorrow do we meet in life that we do not in part bring upon ourselves?  Who is there of us who is not wise after time? which of us has not made some fatal mistake?”

I felt half indignant that Uncle John did not tell her how much more to blame, how weak, how reckless Herbert had been; but the calmer expression which came over Alice’s countenance showed me that he was right, that he best knew her heart.  She could not now be just to herself; she was happier in being unjust.

We were still and silent for a long time.  The light wood-fire on the hearth crackled and burned to ashes, but it had done its office in tempering the chill of the autumn evening, and through the half-open door stole the ‘sweet decaying smell’ of the fallen leaves, while the hush of an Indian-summer night seemed to calm our very hearts with its stillness.

Uncle John spoke at last.  His voice was very gentle and subdued as he said: 

“I told you once, Alice, that my life should be opened to you, if ever its errors could be either warning or consolation to you.  But who am I, to judge what beacon-lights we may hold out to each other?  There is as much egotism, sometimes, in silence as in the free speech which asks for sympathy.  Perhaps I have been too proud to lay open my follies before you and my little Kate.”