Her husband and—and David, were sons of the same father; and the name she bore, the home in which she was living, the estates the title carried, were not her husband’s, but another’s—David’s. She fell back in her chair, white and faint, but, with a great effort, she conquered the swimming weakness which blinded her. Sons of the same father! The past flashed before her, the strange likeness she had observed, the trick of the head, the laugh, the swift gesture, the something in the voice. She shuddered as she had done in reading the letter. But they were related only in name, in some distant, irreconcilable way—in a way which did not warrant the sudden scarlet flush that flooded her face. Presently she recovered herself. She—what did she suffer, compared with her who wrote this revelation of a lifetime of pain, of bitter and torturing knowledge! She looked up at the picture on the wall, at the still, proud, emotionless face, the conventional, uninspired personality, behind which no one had seen, which had agonised alone till the last. With what tender yet pitiless hand had she laid bare the lives of her husband and her son! How had the neglected mother told the bitter truth of him to whom she had given birth! “So brilliant and able, and unscrupulous, like yourself; but, oh, sure of winning a great place in the world... so calculating and determined and ambitious.... That laboratory which I have hated so. It has always seemed to me the place where some native evil and cruelty in your blood worked out its will....”
With a deep-drawn sigh Hylda said to herself: “If I were dying to-morrow, would I say that? She loved them so—at first must have loved them so; and yet this at the last! And I—oh, no, no, no!” She looked at a portrait of Eglington on the table near, touched it caressingly, and added, with a sob in her voice: “Oh, Harry, no, it is not true! It is not native evil and cruelty in your blood. It has all been a mistake. You will do right. We will do right, Harry. You will suffer, it will hurt, the lesson will be hard—to give up what has meant so much to you; but we will work it out together, you and I, my very dear. Oh, say that we shall, that....” She suddenly grew silent. A tremor ran through her, she became conscious of his presence near her, and turned, as though he were behind her. There was nothing. Yet she felt him near, and, as she did so, the soul-deep feeling with which she had spoken to the portrait fled. Why was it that, so often, when absent from him, her imagination helped her to make excuses for him, inspired her to press the real truth out of sight, and to make believe that he was worthy of a love which, but through some inner fault of her own, might be his altogether, and all the love of which he was capable might be hers?
She felt him near her, and the feelings possessing her a moment before slowly chilled and sank away. Instinctively her eyes glanced towards the door. She saw the handle turn, and she slipped the letter inside the portfolio again.
The door opened briskly now, and Eglington entered with what his enemies in the newspaper press had called his “professional smile”—a criticism which had angered his wife, chiefly because it was so near the truth. He smiled. Smiling was part of his equipment, and was for any one at any time that suited him.
Her eyes met his, and he noted in her something that he had never seen before. Something had happened. The Duchess of Snowdon was in the house; had it anything to do with her? Had she made trouble? There was trouble enough without her. He came forward, took Hylda’s hand and kissed it, then kissed her on the cheek. As he did so, she laid a hand on his arm with a sudden impulse, and pressed it. Though his presence had chilled the high emotions of a few moments before, yet she had to break to him a truth which would hurt him, dismay him, rob his life of so much that helped it; and a sudden protective, maternal sense was roused in her, reached out to shelter him as he faced his loss and the call of duty.
“You have just come?” she said, in a voice that, to herself, seemed far away.
“I have been here some hours,” he answered. Secrecy again—always the thing that had chilled the dead woman, and laid a cold hand upon herself—“I felt the shadow of secrecy in your life. When you talked most I felt you most secretive, and the feeling slowly closed the door upon all frankness and sympathy and open speech between us.”
“Why did you not see me—dine with me?” she asked. “What can the servants think?” Even in such a crisis the little things had place—habit struck its note in the presence of her tragedy.
“You had the Duchess of Snowdon, and we are not precisely congenial; besides, I had much to do in the laboratory. I’m working for that new explosive of which I told you. There’s fame and fortune in it, and I’m on the way. I feel it coming”—his eyes sparkled a little. “I made it right with the servants; so don’t be apprehensive.”
“I have not seen you for nearly a week. It doesn’t seem—friendly.”