He paused again, as if to give her time to blame him; but still she spoke no word, still she waited with face upturned.
He went on gravely and steadily. "I knew that opium was a very dangerous drug for her to take in however minute a quantity, but I hoped I had put a stop to that. I could not foresee to-day's events. Hunt-Goring is no favourite of mine, but I never anticipated his taking such a step. I did not so much as know that he was in a position to do so. He suppressed that fact on the sole occasion on which Miss Campion's name was mentioned between us."
Olga spoke for the first time, her stiff lips scarcely moving. "I think he is a devil," she said slowly.
Max made a gesture expressive of indifference on that point. "People who form the drug habit are seldom over-squeamish in other respects," he said. "He has certainly hastened matters, but he is not responsible for the evil itself. That has been germinating during the whole of her life."
"And—that—was why Sir Kersley jilted her mother?" Olga spoke in a low, detached voice. She seemed to be trying to grasp a situation that eluded her.
"It was." Max answered with a return to his customary brevity; his tone was not without bitterness. "Kersley was merciful enough to think of the next generation. He was a doctor, and he knew that hereditary madness is the greatest evil—save one—in the world. Therefore he sacrificed his happiness."
"What is the greatest evil?" she asked, still with the air of bringing herself painfully back as it were from a long distance.
He was watching her shrewdly as he answered. "Hereditary vice—crime."
"Is crime hereditary?"
"In nine cases out of ten—yes."