A long silence followed; and then suddenly Bagott lifted his head, and looked straight and haggard into the eyes before him.
‘She was thy mother,’ he said.
The lad gave a little gasp; but he knelt up manly to receive the stroke he felt was threatening. The other did not alter his fixed gaze.
‘Who told you?’ he asked.
‘No one.’
‘Since when have you known—or guessed?’
‘I think, in my heart, from that day when she came and kissed me on the road after the Queen had passed.’ He spoke up steadily, putting force upon himself to do so.
‘What made you think that she that kissed you was your mother?’
‘I know not—some instinct. But the thought only grew to haunt me after years had gone, when once there returned upon me a memory of Clerivault’s message, and of how, in seeming response to it, my dear master had taken me apart that day to see the Queen go by, and of what had followed. And after, when I read the name in the book, and thought of how I called you Uncle, it all seemed to piece together, so that in a moment I felt the truth of it, and wept.’
‘Why should you weep?’ He said it harshly, with a sneer. ‘If she’s dead, the nobler parent lives. Are you not curious to know about him—your father?’