“Dear lad,” she said, “you know not what you ask. The cause of my relapse is a mental one. I have done a great wrong to two people, a very great wrong, and it is too late to right it. No, I am not delirious.” She smiled up into his troubled, anxious face and her eyes were clear, even though unusually bright.
Then the nurse glided in to protest that Mrs. Poindexter-Jones would better rest before talking more with her son. But the sick woman was obstinate. “Miss Dane,” she said, “please let me do as I wish in this matter. I will take the responsibility with the doctor. I want to be alone with my boy for fifteen minutes. Then he will go away and you may come.”
The nurse could do nothing but retire, though much against her better judgment. Harold seated himself close to the bed and held one of his mother’s hands in his cool, firm clasp.
“What is it, dearest?” he asked. “What is troubling you?”
Then she told the story, the whole of it, not sparing her own wrong training of the girl, concluding with her disappointment in her adopted daughter. The lad leaned over and kissed his mother tenderly. “You meant so kindly,” he said, “when you took an orphan into your home and gave her every opportunity to make good.”
He hesitated and the woman asked: “Harold, did you know? Did you ever guess? You do not seem surprised.”
“Yes, dearest. Long ago. Not just at first, of course, for I was only five when Gwynette came into our home and she was three, but later, when I was grown, I knew that she was not my own little sister, or she would have come to us as a wee baby.”
“Of course, I might have known that you would reason it out when you were older. I wish now that you had spoken to me about it, then I could have asked your advice sooner.”
“My advice, mother?”
“Yes, dear lad. It is often very helpful to talk a problem over with someone whose point of view naturally would be different. You might have saved me from many mistakes. What I wish to ask now is this: If I can obtain the permission of the Warners (we made an agreement long years ago that the secret was never to be revealed by any of us), but if now they think it might be best, would you advise me to tell Gwynette the truth?”