"You are Lord Burdon!"
He let her hands go and pressed his own again to his head. "Can you only talk like that when you see me suffering?"
She rose to her feet. "Percival! Percival, listen to me. It is true. It is what I have kept for you these years. It is what I have meant when I told you I had something for you. You are Lord Burdon!"
He also stood. "Are you mad, Aunt Maggie? Are you mad?"
She staggered back against the wall. While he stared at her as he questioned her sanity, while she saw the look in his eyes as he asked her, there came to her with a shock of sudden fear, as to one that has released a wild and mighty thing and shudders to have done it, the words Japhra had said: "Mistress, beware lest thou betrayest him!"
He came swiftly to her and roughly caught her. "Are you mad? What is this?"
She recovered herself. "Do you know that box in your room?"
The locked box was an old joke of his. "What has that to do with it?"
"The proofs are there. You shall see."
"Show me," he said, his voice not to be recognised for any he had spoken with. "Show me!"