He stopped short. Doris had started to her feet, crimson and half choked, hardly able to believe her own ears.
Winnie!—and Jane! Morris!—and Maurice!—the same name, differently spelt.
His father—a gentleman! In a flash she recalled the portrait, found and opened by Mrs. Brutt; the narrow, low-browed bad face, the worse than vulgar look. That—his father! And his mother—the heavy, blunt, silent woman, Mrs. Morris! And his sister—the impossible Jane, in yellow blouse and furious fringe and cheap gorgeous hat!
It was like an abyss opening before her! This new sweet world of happiness, in which for days she had lived, underwent eclipse.
In a flash she saw it all; and she forgot where she was. She forgot everything, except the dire discovery that Dick Maurice, the man to whom she had lost her heart, was the son of Phil Morris and Nurse Molly, and—the brother of Jane!
Her first impulse was to spring to her feet, to put a space between herself and him. She obeyed the impulse unthinkingly, with a hasty backward movement.
One step, and she was on the verge of that tremendous depth, which separated this lofty headland from the valley, far far below. Dominated by the one overwhelming thought, she did not dream of danger. A second step—and her foot was over the edge, in empty air.
She tottered—staggered—flung out her hands. Maurice, springing to save her, believed for one awful hundredth of a second that he was too late; that she had surmounted the perils of a dangerous rock-climb, to perish from off this grassy mount. The shock of her staggering clutch at the air, as she swayed backwards, drove every vestige of colour from his face; and any less instantaneous leap to the rescue must have failed of its object. She was in the very act of falling, when gripped by his hand and dragged away.
"How—could you?"
She saw that he was ghastly.