“You can own it?”
“Why not?”
“So vile an admission!”
“Who has there ever been to teach me it was vile? I have lived alone, Lady Skene,—untaught, unacknowledged, conforming to the pattern of my surroundings. If that moulded me to secrecy, who was to blame? If to be watchful and observant in the midst of enemies is a crime, I plead guilty to it with all my heart. There was always this much, this one unhappy riddle, to exercise my mind—why I, who longed for love so much, was denied my most natural claim to it; why my mother, of all the mothers in the world, could never bring herself to be a mother to the child who worshipped her. Well, my watching has borne fruit. I have discovered why, at last.”
Her head had drooped, lower, lower. It was terrible so to stand before that love which had been my dream, and betray to it the fulness of my renunciation. Yet I had no choice.
“Lady Skene,” I said, “I was in the Baby’s Garden that night you had your interview with Mr Dalston.”
She was down now, crushed at my feet, her pride, her beauty, her queenly jewels, all in ruin before me. Was I not satisfied at last? The fire tinkled; the wind came like a hand on the casement; I could see by the motion of her fair shoulders how heavily she breathed.
“Lady Skene,” I began again—and suddenly she caught at me like one going under in deep waters.
“Not that—Richard—say it once—once—let me hear it on your lips.”
“It is too late.”