Coming Through the Rye by Grace Livingston Hill

appreciated the shame and humiliation of the discovery of the evening to the full, but somehow this note to this common little painted girl so far below her brother socially, so much beneath him in education and breeding, so low in the moral scale, seemed suddenly to reveal to her the depths to which they all had fallen, and to sweep away in one stroke any illusions she might have entertained concerning her brother’s innocence in these other matters.
    Then Lawrence
did
know about it all.
    Then he not only
knew
but was also deep into the business himself.
    Then that was where all his money had come from! It had seemed so wonderful that he should have stepped right into a great salary just because Grandfather used to know the grandfather of the man who was at the head of the business. Probably Lawrence’s salary at the office was after all but a mere pittance. Probably he kept the position to better hide his real business! These last suggestions only hovered in the back of her mind. She had not yet gotten adjusted to the idea of Lawrence as a deceiver. Never had she thought of anything like dishonor in connection with this brother who had always seemed to her just about perfect.
    It was true that Lawrence had been away at school for years, and she had seen but little of him except at vacation times. But he had written her the most charming letters, cheerful and breezy, telling her of all he did and of all his friends. Ever there had been an atmosphere of refinement and righteousness about him. How could it be possible that he could have descended to this?
    She read the note over again, trying to torture its phrases into a mere business communication, or possibly a message he was transmitting to Frances from some friend of hers, but the truth stared her in the face. Lawrence must have had some kind of friendship with this low-born little ignorant child, whose limitations would necessarily have taken him among people with whom he did not naturally belong. Dimly she understood that a relationship like that must be one of temptation, must carry him to places where his own ideals would be cheapened by the contact.
    Something rose up in righteous anger within her soul toward the pert little flapper who had presumed to be intimate with her brother.
Her brother!
    And then her pride winced at the thought that she could no longer hold her head up at the thought of her family. Not that she had ever boasted or been unduly proud of herself, but always she had been glad that she had been born into a family who were Godfearing, law-abiding, educated, refined people, above doing anything low or mean or beyond the pale of culture.
    Now! Now where was she!
The daughter of a bootlegger!
    Down went her head into the pillow once more, and the tears welled forth, strangling her for the moment.
    Back came the vision of her father’s white face and hunted look just before he fell.
    Like a rock upon her heart fell the conviction that her father had known what those men had come for, and that there had been guilt in his look!
    Then there surged from her heart a reaction. She would not believe that of her father! He had
not knowingly
sinned! It might be that he had come to suspect something. There might have been things in the business to make him uneasy. But surely, surely he had not known all! They had been using him as a blind to the world to hide their illicit operations.
    As she recalled it now, her father hardly ever went down into the cellar—not in the daytime—and he could not have gone at night without awaking her. Why, she could remember but three times when her father had gone down into the cellar. Twice to arrange about the coal and open the chute and once when those great packing cases had come from the West. He had gone down and arranged where they were to be put. There had been several of them, more it seemed to her memory than had appeared when she went through the cellar with the young officer. They had probably been