“Fourteen years,” repeated the woman, “ever since my elder child, Pamela, was four years old. I knew they were told—both of them—that I was dead, and that was all I was allowed to know. Can you wonder that there was no difficulty in believing me insane? But I never was insane, no, not for an hour. Always, always I had the idea in my mind that I must get out, I must find them, I must save them from such a father. But the years went by, and I could never get away. It was in the west country, close to the Welsh border, that I was shut up, and I was out of the world, out of touch with everything. I never got a chance of escape till six months ago, when they thought I had worn out my old longings to be free, and then I came straight to London, and hunted, and hunted, till I found out where Eugène had hidden himself, and the new name by which he was known.”
“And what is that?” asked Audrey.
“Reginald Candover,” replied the woman quickly.
Although she had been prepared for this, Audrey could not hear it without a fresh shudder.
“How can I believe all this?” she asked suddenly, turning pale as certain possibilities connected with this terrible discovery occurred to her. “I can’t, I won’t believe it!”
The visitor shrugged her shoulders.
“Why should you believe it? It is no affair of mine whether you do or not,” she said simply. “All I came here for was to learn something of my children. Pamela sent me your name and address as a friend of theirs, and all I ask of you is to tell me all you can about them. What are they going to do? They are nearly grown up, and want a mother’s care. Who is going to give it them?”
Audrey listened with blanching cheeks. This insistence on the one point, the girls, always the two girls, was to her mind more convincing than anything else of the truth of the woman’s story.
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Audrey. “They are getting impatient at being left at school, and are always importuning to be taken away. Pamela wants to come to me. But I don’t want her here, and to do him justice, their father seems just as unwilling to bring them away from school as they are anxious to come.”
A look of relief came over the poor woman’s face.