There was a catch of genuine sorrow in his voice. Slowly Fledra looked back over her shoulder at him.
"You've promised me that you'd never tell anybody what I told you."
Horace supplemented his last rebuke with:
"Nor will I! But I insist that you come to me the next time you are tempted to lie. Do you hear, Fledra?"
"Yes," she answered.
Suddenly she began to sob wildly, and in another instant fled down the hall.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Not more than two weeks after Lon had demanded the twins from Horace, Everett Brimbecomb sat in his office, brooding over the shadow that had so suddenly darkened his life. The dream he had dreamed of a woman he could call Mother, of some man—his father—of whom he had striven to be worthy, had dissolved into a specter with a shriveled face and shaggy hair, into a woman whom he had left in the cemetery to die. Although he was secure in the thought that he would not be connected with the tragedy, he shuddered every time he thought of her and of the coming spring, when the body would be discovered. He did not repent the crime he had committed; but the fear that the secret of his birth would be brought to life tortured him night and day. He remembered that Scraggy had said his father wanted him; that she had come to Tarrytown to take him back. Did his father know who and where he was? If so, eventual discovery was inevitable.