"What then?"
"I'll kill him, probably. At least I'll choke this lie or this truth, whichever it is, down the throats of this town. God! I'm filius nullius! I'm the son of no man! I'm worse. I'm a loafer. I've been supported by a woman—my own mother, who had so little, who was left alone—oh, God! God!"
"Don," she cried out now. "Don, I'd died if I could have kept it from you. Oh, my son—my son!"
CHAPTER III
TWO MOTHERS
The young man stood motionless, facing the white-faced woman who had pronounced his fate for him. Happily it chanced that there came interruption, for a moment relieving both of the necessity of speech.
The click of the little crippled gate as it swung to brought Aurora Lane to her senses now. She hastened to the door, toward the outer stair. She met someone at the door.
"Julia!" she exclaimed. "Come in. Oh, I'm so glad. Come! He's here—he's come—he's right here now!"
There entered now the figure of a youngish-looking woman, her hair just tinged with gray here and there upon the temples; a woman perhaps the junior of Aurora Lane by a year or so. Of middle stature, she was of dark hair, and of brown eyes singularly luminous and soft. Not uncomely, one would have called her at first sight. The second glance would have shown the limp with which Julia Delafield walked, the bent-top cane which was her constant companion. She was one of those handicapped in the race of life, a cripple from her childhood, but a cripple in body only. One might not look in her face without the feeling that here was a nature of much charm.