A Daughter's Strange Inheritance

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Through his friend, Dr. Adams, William Randolph secures an introduction to Mlle. Lucille, a vaudeville tight-wire performer, whom he greatly admires. He is warned that Lucille is a slave to drink, but unheeding, falls in love with the actress and proposes. She refuses him, preferring her work to married life. Later, while under the influence of liquor, she is injured in a fall and forced to give up her profession. Randolph again proposes and is accepted. Adams warns him that his children will inherit a tendency to drink, but Randolph assures the doctor he will cure Lucille, and marries her. The craving for liquor returns shortly after her daughter's birth and Lucille, after consuming more than her weakened constitution can stand, dies in her husband's arms. Sixteen years later Margaret is dismissed from Wyomissing Seminary because, as the principal explains it, she seems possessed of a double personality. At times she is perfectly normal, and at others reckless and exhibits a vicious temper. Randolph, greatly worried, watches the girl closely. He is heartbroken to find that she is taking liquor on the sly. Adams arrives on a visit, is told of Margaret's peculiar mental condition, and in company with her father, takes Margaret to the huge sanitarium of which he is now the head. Her father returns home and she attempts to go back with him but is told she must stay. The first clash of wills results in victory for Adams. He uses hypnotic influences on the girl, then shows her by the power of terrible examples, the results of giving way to weaknesses. Margaret returns home cured, and the sight of the derelicts still fresh in her mind, she begs her father to stop when she sees him raise a glass of wine to his lips. He does so, with a silent prayer of thankfulness for his daughter's complete recovery from the curse of her strange inheritance.