He stopped, as though the subject were too painful, and then resumed, half dreamily:
"I am going to tell you now what will lend an added value to that little trinket I have given you for Winifred." He paused again, and drew a deep breath, looking at me hard. "It belonged to—to my wife, when she was a child of Winifred's age. Winifred will prize it, because it was—her mother's."
I stood up, and Roderick, rising also, confronted me.
"Can you deny it?" he asked defiantly.
I was silent.
"Pray what is the object of further secrecy?" he pleaded. "Tell me, is not Winifred my child, the child of my dead wife?"
I bowed my head in assent. Concealment was neither useful nor desirable any longer.
The look of triumph, of exaltation, of joy, which swept over his face was good to see.
"But you will wait?" I pleaded, in my return. "You will go to Ireland, as agreed, and your child shall be all your own entirely and forever?"