For the first year after his return home Mrs. Whitford saw nothing in her son to awaken uneasiness.  His cultivated tastes and love of intellectual things held him above the enervating influences of the social life into which he was becoming more and more drawn.  Her first feeling of uneasiness came when, at a large party given by one of her most intimate friends, she heard his voice ring out suddenly in the supper-room.  Looking down the table, she saw him with a glass of champagne in his hand, which he was flourishing about in rather an excited way.  There was a gay group of young girls around him, who laughed merrily at the sport he made.  Mrs. Whitford’s pleasure was gone for that evening.  A shadow came down on the bright future of her son—­a future to which her heart had turned with such proud anticipations.  She was oppressed by a sense of humiliation.  Her son had stepped down from his pedestal of dignified self-respect, and stood among the common herd of vulgar young men to whom in her eyes he had always been superior.

But greater than her humiliation were the fears of Mrs. Whitford.  A thoughtful and observant woman, she had reason for magnifying the dangers that lay in the path of her son.  The curse of more than one member of both her own and husband’s family had been intemperance.  While still a young man her father had lost his self-control, and her memory of him was a shadow of pain and sorrow.  He died at an early age, the victim of an insatiable and consuming desire for drink.  Her husband’s father had been what is called a “free liver”—­that is, a man who gave free indulgence to his appetites, eating and drinking to excess, and being at all times more or less under the influence of wine or spirits.

It was the hereditary taint that Mrs. Whitford dreaded.  Here lay the ground of her deepest anxiety.  She had heard and thought enough on this subject to know that parents transmit to their children an inclination to do the things they have done from habit—­strong or weak, according to the power of the habit indulged.  If the habit be an evil one, then the children are in more than common danger, and need the wisest care and protection.  She knew, also, from reading and observation, that an evil habit of mind or body which did not show itself in the second generation would often be reproduced in the third, and assert a power that it required the utmost strength of will and the greatest watchfulness to subdue.

And so, when her son, replying to her earnest warning, said, “I am in no danger.  Set your heart at rest,” she knew better—­knew that a deadly serpent was in the path he was treading.  And she answered him with increasing earnestness: 

“The danger may be far greater than you imagine, Ellis.  It is greater than you imagine.”

Her voice changed as she uttered the last sentence into a tone that was almost solemn.

“You are talking wildly,” returned the young man, “and pay but a poor compliment to your son’s character and strength of will.  In danger of becoming a sot!—­for that is what you mean.  If you were not my mother, I should be angry beyond self-control.”