He shifted a paper or two on his desk. I could see he was staggered, and thrown for the moment off his balance. I had no object in hurrying him. After all, if he had the elective licence, he had not the instinct to tell a lie.
“Answer at your leisure, sir,” I said. My tone, I quite felt it, took command. This narrow mind had no longer any terrors for me. I had come, in a day, of a very stern and sorrowful intellectual age. He turned to me presently, almost propitiatory.
“What a very curious question, Gaskett! Lady Skene has surely always done her duty by you?”
“That wasn’t what I asked. I asked if I were her son.”
“How can you doubt it?”
“I can’t, sir, to my grief.”
“To your grief? O, this is sad!”
He fidgeted with the lamp—it was evening—and tried to meet my eyes again, but avoided them.
“It is very sad,” I said. “But why should you deplore it, when from the first you have fostered and encouraged in her that spirit which is responsible for all the sadness?”
“I, Gaskett?”