“Won’t you go away, till it is all over?” she said. “It will be horrible for you, Colin, and I don’t want you to suffer. The letters are all I want of you; I will tell Mr. Markham about the register and he will do whatever is necessary. Go back to your beloved island; you were robbed of your stay there. Wait there until all this business, which will be horrible for you, is done. You can see your dear Mr. Cecil again....” she added, trying to smile back at him.
“Yes, I might do that,” said Colin thoughtfully. “In fact, I probably shall. But I must try to take in what you have been saying. I can’t understand it: you must explain. You referred, for instance, to my mother’s letters. What letters? I don’t know of any letters of my mother as being in existence. Still less have I got any. How could I have? She died when I was but a few weeks old. Do mothers write letters to the babies at their breasts?”
“The two letters to your uncle,” said she.
Colin planted a levering elbow by his side, and sat up.
“I suppose it is I who am mad,” he said, “because you talk quite quietly and coherently, and yet I don’t understand a single word of what you say. Letters from my mother to my uncle? Ah....”
He took her hand again, amending his plan in accordance with his talk with Salvatore.
“You’re right,” he said. “Uncle Salvatore did once give me two letters from my mother to him. Little faint things. I destroyed them not so long ago: one should never keep letters. But you’re right, Vi. Uncle Salvatore did give me a couple of letters once, but when on earth did I mention them to you? What a memory you have got! It’s quite true; one announced my mother’s marriage, the other spoke of the birth of poor Raymond and me. But what of them? And what—oh, I must be mad—what in heaven’s name do you mean, when you talk, if I understand you correctly, about sending somebody out to Naples? The register in the Consulate there? And my succession? Are they connected? Isn’t it usual for a son to succeed his father? I’m all at sea—or am I asleep and dreaming? Pinch me, darling. I want to wake up. What register?”
Some nightmare sense of slipping, slipping, slipping took hold of Violet.
“The erasure in the register,” she said. “All that you told me.”
Colin swung his legs off the window-seat and got up. There was an electric bell close at hand and he rang it.