"But there's something else I must tell you," pursued Gammon, with much awkwardness. "You don't know—who to ask for."
The woman's eyes, even now not in their depths unkindly, searched him with a startled expression.
"I suppose I shall ask for Mr. Clover?"
"They wouldn't know who you meant. That isn't his real name."
A cry escaped her; she turned pale.
"Not his real name? I thought it—I was afraid of that! Who am I, then? What—what have I a right to call myself?"
With a glance at the door of the sitting-room, nervousness bringing the sweat to his forehead, Gammon told what he knew, all except the burning of the will, and the fact of Greenacre's mission to Ireland. The listener was at first sight utterly bewildered, looked incredulous, and only when certain details had been repeated and emphasized began to grasp the reality of what she heard.
"Oh!" she exclaimed at length in profound agitation, "that explains so many things! I never thought of this, but I've often wondered. I understand now."
She paused, struggling to control herself. Then, not without dignity, in the tone and with the face that are natural at such moments only to a woman here and there; the nobler of her sex, she added:
"I can't go to the hospital. Someone else must tell me about him. I can't go."