"You know that you were born at Agra in India?"
"Of course I know that."
"And your father, Captain Clinton, has never spoken to you about the circumstances?"
Edgar shook his head. "No; I only know that I was born there."
"I should have thought that he would have told you the story," she said; "for there were many knew of it, and you would be sure to hear it sooner or later."
"I do not want to hear of it," he said, leaping to his feet. "If there was anything my father wanted me to know he would tell it to me at once. You do not suppose I want to hear it from anyone else?"
He was making for the door, when she said, "Then you do not know that you are not his son?"
He stopped abruptly. "Don't know I am not his son!" he repeated. "You must be mad."
"I am not mad at all," she said. "You are not his son. Not any relation in the world to him. Sit down again and I will tell you the story."
He mechanically obeyed, feeling overwhelmed with the news he had heard. Then as she told him how the children had become mixed, and how Captain Clinton had decided to bring them up together until he should be able to discover by some likeness to himself or wife which was his son, Edgar listened to the story with a terrible feeling of oppression stealing over him. He could not doubt that she was speaking the truth, for if it were false it could be contradicted at once. There were circumstances too which seemed to confirm it. He recalled now, that often in their younger days his father and mother had asked casual visitors if they saw any likeness between either of the children to them; and he specially remembered how closely Colonel Winterbottom, who had been major in his father's regiment, had scrutinized them both, and how he had said, "No, Clinton, for the life of me I cannot see that one is more like you and your wife than the other." And now this woman had told him that he was not their son; and he understood that she must be this sergeant's wife, and that if he was not Captain Clinton's son she must be his mother.