The question, the tone, the expression of his face and the look in his eyes, made Taylor stare at Tony, speechless for the moment. The question was so unexpected; it brought such a flood of memory into the man's mind that his slow, heavy wits stood still, and he could only stand staring and gaping at the alert young face.
"Who is my mother?" Tony repeated abruptly.
"Your mother? Why—what's come over you, lad? Your mother? Why—go on to the house and ask her," Taylor replied, the only idea which came to him being the idea to escape from the difficulty by passing it on to some one else. But he was not to escape so easily.
"Am I your son?" Tony asked.
"My son? Why—my son? Ain't your name Taylor? Ain't you always—what's up with you? Who's been—you haven't—what's put that in your head?"
Tony leaned his arms on the top rail of the fence and looked away across the paddock. It was a simple question to answer, he told himself—a simple question for this man above all others to answer; but instead of doing so, he hesitated and was confused.
"I've heard—something," he said quietly. Now that he was face to face with the mystery, he lost his irritation and impatience. It was all true, he told himself. There was something which had been kept from him; something which Ailleen had learned and resented; something which——"I've heard something," he repeated, checking his thoughts. "I came straight to you to ask if it were true. If it were not, you need not—you would have said so."
"I don't know what you've heard," Taylor said slowly. "I don't know, and I don't care; for I ain't a man to catch an idea quick like. But I'll tell you this: you'd never have heard it from me—never. You'd have lived and died as you've been, just as if I'd been your father."
"Then you are not?" Tony exclaimed, turning on the man with a fierce earnestness.
"No, Tony, I ain't; but you'd never have heard it from me save this way. And now you know—well, it don't make no difference. You're just as you always have been—no more, no less. I'd never have told you, nor would your——" he stopped as he realized that the word which was on his tongue no longer applied.