“Sir,” said Gaston suddenly, “I told you last night the honest story of my life. I want to start fair and square. I want the honest story of my father’s life here; how and why he left, and what these letters mean.”
He took from his pocket the notes he had found the night before, and handed them. Sir William read them with a disturbed look, and turned them over and over. Gaston told where he had found them.
Sir William spoke at last.
“The main story is simple enough. Robert was extravagant, and Ian was vicious and extravagant also. Both got into trouble. I was younger then, and severe. Robert hid nothing, Ian all he could. One day things came to a climax. In his wild way, Robert—with Jock Lawson—determined to rescue a young man from the officers of justice, and to get him out of the country. There were reasons. He was the son of a gentleman; and, as we discovered afterwards, Robert had been too intimate with the wife—his one sin of the kind, I believe. Ian came to know, and prevented the rescue. Meanwhile, Robert was liable to the law for the attempt. There was a bitter scene here, and I fear that my wife and I said hard things to Robert.”
Gaston’s eyes were on Lady Belward’s portrait. “What did my grandmother say?”
There was a pause, then:
“That she would never call him son again, I believe; that the shadow of his life would be hateful to her always. I tell you this because I see you look at that portrait. What I said, I think, was no less. So, Robert, after a wild burst of anger, flung away from us out of the house. His mother, suddenly repenting, ran to follow him, but fell on the stone steps at the door, and became a cripple for life. At first she remained bitter against Robert, and at that time Ian painted that portrait. It is clever, as you may see, and weird. But there came a time when she kept it as a reproach to herself, not Robert. She is a good woman—a very good woman. I know none better, really no one.”
“What became of the arrested man?” Gaston asked quietly, with the oblique suggestiveness of a counsel.
“He died of a broken blood-vessel on the night of the intended rescue, and the matter was hushed up.”
“What became of the wife?”