Paul Ravenel, during the last days, had been schooling himself to a reserve of manner, but this statement, as of a thing well known which he too must be supposed to know, loosened all his armour. A startled cry burst from his lips.
“What’s that?” he exclaimed, and with a frightened glance at his white face Phyllis repeated her words.
“I thought you knew,” she added.
“No.”
Paul walked a little apart. One of the garden paths was bordered by some arches of roses. He stood by them, plucking at one or two of the flowers and seeing none of them at all. The keystone of the explanation which he had built in order to account for and uphold his father was down now and with it the whole edifice. It had all depended upon the idea of a passionate, enduring love in his father’s heart for the wife who had died in giving birth to her son, the enemy. And in that idea there was no truth at all!
Paul reflected now in bitterness that there never had been any reason why he should have held his belief—any wild outburst from Monsieur Ravenel, any word of tender remembrance. He had got his illusion—yes, he reached the truth now in this old garden—from an instinct to preserve himself from hating that stranger with whom he lived and on whom he depended for his food and the necessities of his life. He turned suddenly back to Phyllis Vanderfelt.
“What I don’t understand, Miss Phyllis, is how it is that remembering so much of other things here, I can remember nothing of my mother.”
“She only came home here to die,” Phyllis replied gently.
Paul pressed his hands over his eyes for a moment or two in a gesture of pain which made the young girl’s heart ache for him. But he looked at her calmly afterwards and said: “I am afraid that Colonel Vanderfelt has very bad news to tell me to-night.”
Phyllis Vanderfelt laid her hand gently upon his arm.