“It isn’t. Nobody has told me.... I didn’t know.”
“But what did you think?”
“Never mind what I thought. Every one doesn’t talk with your freedom. I’ve never been told. Who was my mother?”
“Stoner says she died in hospital. Soon after you were born. He never knew her name.”
“Wasn’t it Stubland?”
“Lord, No! Why should it be?”
“But then——”
“That’s one of the things that makes you so splendidly new, Joan. You start clean in the world—like a new Eve. Without even an Adam to your name. Fatherless, motherless, sisterless, brotherless. You fall into the world like a meteor!”
She stood astonished at the way in which she had blundered. Brotherless! If Huntley had not drawn her back by the arm Lady Charlotte’s car would have touched her....