"And my mother--she must have known all this--she could not possibly have been ignorant of it!" cried Paul.
George Wainwright was silent.
"And she would have let me marry Annette without any revelation of the mystery, for the sake of that wretched money; she would have embittered my future, and rendered the rest of my life hopeless and miserable. What a shameful conspiracy! What a base and wicked plot!"
"Hush, Paul!" said George Wainwright, laying his hand on his arm; "recollect of whom you are speaking."
"It is that that makes it all the worse," cried Paul. "To think that she, my mother, should have been so besotted by the hope of greed as to shut her eyes to all the misery which she was heaping up in store for me. It is too horrible to think of. What a narrow chance I had! What a providential escape!"
"Yes," said George, in a low voice, "you have escaped."
There was something in his friend's tone which touched Paul's heart at once.
"What a selfish brute I am," he cried, "to have been thinking of myself and to have forgotten you! How much worse it is for you than for me! My dear George, I never cared for Annette, and set my affections elsewhere; so that beyond the pity which I naturally feel for her, and the shock which I have experienced in learning that my mother could have been so short-sighted and so culpable, there is nothing to touch me in the matter. But you--you loved her for herself; you won her; for I never saw her take to or be interested in anyone so much before; and now you have to give her up."
George's face was buried in his hands. He groaned heavily, but he said nothing.
"Is there no hope?" asked Paul; "no hope of any cure? Is she irrecoverably insane?"