He interrupted her. “I’ve come to speak to you,” he said again. His underlip quivered. “I don’t know how to do it!” he said desperately, looking round the room, at the cats, and the birdcages. “Now that I’m here — No, it isn’t possible!”
The chatter was stilled on her lips. She peered at him short-sightedly, sudden alarm in her face. She saw how haggard he looked, and retreated a step involuntarily. Her voice shook as she faltered: “Of course, dear! Of course! Though I can’t imagine what — You must let me fetch you some refreshment! A glass of sherry, and a biscuit. Phineas will be so pleased to see you! He was only saying the other day — But what am I doing, not asking you to sit down?”
“I don’t want anything. I came to you because of something Father told me. I don’t trust him: he’d say anything! But I’ve got to know the truth, and you’re the only person — Oh no, my God, there’s Martha!”
There was no more colour in her face than in his. She uttered a little moan, and shrank back from him, terror in her eyes. “I don’t know what you mean! I don’t know what you mean!” she cried, her voice rising to a shrill note. “Ray dear, you — you aren’t quite well! You’re not yourself! Do — do sit down! I’ll fetch Phineas. I expect you’ve been doing too much. A glass of sherry!”
He stood perfectly still, looking at her, noticing that her nose was shining, and a hairpin was drooping on to her shoulder. He felt as though this were all happening to someone else, not to him, Raymond Penhallow! No more confirmation was needed than that which he read in Delia’s frightened countenance. He would have gone away, but the situation was so strange that he did not know what to do in it, and so stood there, incongruous amongst the feminine knick-knacks with which the room was crammed. The muscles of his throat felt so rigid that he was obliged to swallow once or twice before he could speak. Then he said in a heavy tone which gave little indication of the turmoil in his breast: “It is true. You are my...” He found that he could not utter the word, and changed the phrase — “You aren’t my aunt.”
She began to cry, in a gasping way, dabbing all the time at her eyes: “Oh, Raymond! Oh, Raymond!”
He regarded her stonily. It seemed to him that she had little cause to cry. It was his life which had been ruined; he could not appreciate that she might be crying for this reason. In his own overwhelming chagrin there was no room for compassion either for her present distress, or for the misery she must have endured forty years ago, ,and perhaps through the intervening years. He was conscious only of loathing her, and that so profoundly that it made him feel actually sick.
She had stumbled blindly to a chair, and was crouched in it, gulping and sniffing, and still dabbing at her eyes. They were already a little swollen. She raised them fleetingly to his face, and at once they overflowed again. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry, dear!” she sobbed.
The hopeless inadequacy of her words irritated him. “Sorry!” he ejaculated. “A trifle late in the day for you to be sorry!”
“I didn’t know — I never meant — I’ve always loved you so!” she said piteously.