Black Light by Talbot Mundy — Read

Joe always had hated to dine with his mother alone. Fortunately there was a bottle of not-so-bad Madeira. Joe's mother drank two-thirds of it. Joe kept filling her glass; she sometimes became good-tempered when she drank too much--she even let pass opportunities to poison hope with cynicism. So he kept on pouring and did not even mention Annie Weems. There was a sort of silent laughter deep within him. He was so absorbed by his own line of thought that he had to jerk himself out of it to listen to his mother. It was never safe not to listen to her.

"Mr. Cummings told me, by the way, that it's useless to try to find the Wilburforces’ child. If she's alive, which he doubts, she'd be beyond hope of redemption--probably Mahommedan or Hindu, with three or four half-caste children of her own already and an inferiority complex like a stray cat's. He says white children raised by natives in this climate lose all sense of honesty and moral stamina. She'd be too old to be educated and too familiar with vice to be safe with anybody's children. I can't see myself taking that sort of young person back to the States with us, even if the immigration people would permit it. I believe we'd better leave her to the gods, as Mr. Cummings phrased it. What do you propose to do to-night?"