“I was brought up to believe there was no excuse for breaking a promise,” Peter senior cut him short severely.  There was Petro’s chance to score, and—­right or wrong—­he took it.

“Then things have changed since the days when you were being brought up,” he said, with one of those straight, clear looks old Peter had always disliked as between son and father.  “Because, you know you promised Ena you would give up going to the store except for important business meetings once or twice a year.  And you haven’t given it up.  You go there nearly every night.”

Peter senior physically quailed.  His great secret was found out!  No use to bluster.  Somehow young Peter had got hold of the long-hidden truth.  He was, in a way, at the fellow’s mercy.  If Petro chose to tell Ena this thing she would fancy that every one except the family knew how old Peter’s grubbing habits had never been shaken off; that with him once a shopkeeper, always a shopkeeper, and that behind her back people must be laughing at the difference between her aristocratic airs and her father’s commonness.

The old man’s stricken face shocked Peter.  He was as much ashamed of himself as if he had kicked his father.

“I oughtn’t to have told you, I know,” he stammered.  “Anyhow, not like this.  I’m sorry.”

Peter senior gathered himself together and feebly bluffed.

“You needn’t be sorry,” he blustered in a thin voice at the top of his throat.  “What do I care whether you know or not?  There’s no disgrace in looking after my own business, I guess!  To please Ena, I’ve made a sort of secret of it, that’s all.  I never ‘promised.’  I only let her and other folks it didn’t concern suppose I lived in idleness, like the lords they admire so much.  No harm in that!  As for you, you’re welcome to know what I do with my time when I go to New York.  But it’s none of your business, all the same, and you’d better keep still about it, or you’ll regret your meddling.  Who told you?  That’s what I want to get at.  Who stuffed you up to the neck with all that damned nonsense about ‘sweat and tears?’ I bet it’s the same man who tried to blackmail me with my own son about my going to the Hands nights.”

“It wasn’t a man who told me,” said Peter, “it was a woman—­or, rather, a girl.  It was me she was blaming, not you.  She thought I was responsible for the wrongs she and other employees suffer from.  She didn’t know it was a secret, your visiting the place.  She simply mentioned it as a fact—–­”

“And you, a son of mine, stood quietly listening to abuse of your father and the house that’s made his fortune—­his fortune and yours—­from a pert young clerk in his store!”

At last Peter senior could speak with the voice of injured virtue.  He could reach Peter junior with the well-deserved lash of reproach.  But no!  The lash striking out, touched air.