“What have you been doing?” he added, looking at the desk where she had sat, glancing round the room. “Has the Duchess left any rags on the multitude of her acquaintances? I wonder that you can make yourself contented here with nothing to do. You don’t look much stronger. I’m sure you ought to have a change. My mother was never well here; though, for the matter of that, she was never very well anywhere. I suppose it’s the laboratory that attracts me here, as it did my father, playing with the ancient forces of the world in these Arcadian surroundings—Arcady without beauty or Arcadians.” He glanced up at his mother’s picture. “No, she never liked it—a very silent woman, secretive almost.”
Suddenly her eyes flared up. Anger possessed her. She choked it down. Secretive—the poor bruised soul who had gone to her grave with a broken heart!
“She secretive? No, Eglington,” she rejoined gravely, “she was congealed. She lived in too cold an air. She was not secretive, but yet she kept a secret—another’s.”
Again Eglington had the feeling which possessed him when he entered the room. She had changed. There was something in her tone, a meaning, he had never heard before. He was startled. He recalled the words of the Duchess as she went up the staircase.
What was it all about?
“Whose secrets did she keep?” he asked, calmly enough.
“Your father’s, yours, mine,” she replied, in a whisper almost.
“Secret? What secret? Good Lord, such mystery!” He laughed mirthlessly.
She came close to him. “I am sorry—sorry, Harry,” she said with difficulty. “It will hurt you, shock you so. It will be a blow to you, but you must bear it.”
She tried to speak further, but her heart was beating so violently that she could not. She turned quickly to the portfolio on the desk, drew forth the fatal letter, and, turning to the page which contained the truth concerning David, handed it to him. “It is there,” she said.