“My poor boy! You don’t mean to say—”
Neither could bring himself to say the word so sacred to Lancelot, and which might have been so sacred to his nephew.
“How did you guess?” said Gerald, lifting up the face that he had hidden on the table.
“I saw the likeness between you and the girl. She reminded me of some one I had once seen.”
“Had you seen her?”
“Once, at a concert, twenty odd years ago. Your aunt, too, was strangely carried back to that scene, by the girl’s voice, I suppose.”
“Poor child!” said Gerald, still laying down his head and seeming terribly oppressed, as Lance felt he well might be.
“It is a sad business for you,” said the uncle, with a kind hand on his shoulder. “How was it she did not claim you before?—not that she has any real claim.”
“She did not know my real name. My father called himself Wood. I never knew the rest of it till after I came home. That fellow bribed the gardener, got in over the wall, or somehow, and when she saw you, and heard you and me and all three of us, it gave her the clue.”
“Well, Gerald, I do not think she can dare to—”