"Quite a distinguished person according to the old Frenchman whom the world regarded as my grandfather."
She handed him Bassompierre's rambling statement about the circumstances of her mother's birth, which he read and put down with an exclamation.
"Well, this is really extraordinary! Do you know that we're second cousins? This Charles Cunningham became the twelfth Lord Saxby. My father was the thirteenth and last earl. What a trick for fate to play upon us both! No wonder there's a likeness between you and Stella. How strange it makes that time at Mulberry Cottage seem. But you know, I always felt that underneath our open and violent hostility there was a radical sympathy quite inexplicable. This explains it."
Sylvia was not at all sure that she felt grateful toward the explanation; mere kinship had never stood for much in her life.
"You must try to sleep again now," she said, sternly.
"But you don't seem at all amazed at this coincidence," Michael protested. "You accept it as if it was a perfectly ordinary occurrence."
"I want you to sleep. Take this milk. We are sure to have a nerve-racking day with these Bulgarians."
"Sylvia, what's the matter?" he persisted. "Why should my discovery of our relationship annoy you?"
"It doesn't annoy me, but I want you to sleep. Do remember that you've only just returned to yourself and that you'll soon want all your strength."
"You've not lost your baffling quality in all these years," he said, and lay silent when he had drunk the warm milk she gave him and while she tidied the floor of the coats that served her for a bed. The letters and the photographs she threw into the brazier and drove them deep into the coke with a stick, looking round defiantly at Michael when they were ashes. He shook his head with a smile, but he did not say anything.