“Oh, I didn’t mean that. Oh, yes; that’s enough; and it’s pretty bad too. But I expected something worse from the rough way you cut up.”
“Worse? In heaven’s name what could be worse? My mother dishonored, my father broken hearted, and I marked out for a murderer, even from my cradle? And then—”
“I say it’s hard, deucedly hard. But inasmuch as you’re not a murderer, you know, I wouldn’t let that side of the matter bother me, if I were you. The bad part of the business is to think of how your father’s happiness, your mother’s innocence, were destroyed. Think how he must have suffered!”
“But you haven’t listened, you haven’t understood the worst, yet. Here, see his name—Pathzuol.”
“Well, what of it?”
“Why, don’t you remember? It is the same name as hers—Veronika’s—my sweetheart’s.”
“Decidedly!” exclaimed Merivale. “That is a startling coincidence, I admit.”
“Couple that with—with the rest of my father’s story and with—with the—well, with all the facts—and I think you’ll confess that it was sufficient to shake me up a bit. To come upon that name at the end of such a letter, it was like being knocked down. I lost my self-possession. Think! if he was her father! But, oh no; it isn’t credible. It’s sheer accident, of course.”
“Of course it is. The letter doesn’t say that he was even married. I suppose there’s more than one Pathzuol in the world as well as more than one Merivale. But all the same, it’s a coincidence of a sort to stir a fellow up. I don’t wonder you lost your balance. Only, the idea of boohooing like a woman! That’s inexcusable. Mercy! what a good hater your father was! And what an unspeakable wretch, Nicholas!”
“Yes,” I went on, “it gave me a pretty severe jolt, the sight of that name; and I can’t seem to get over it. I don’t know why, but I can’t help feeling as though there were more in this than either you or I perceive, as though there were some deduction or other to be drawn from it which is right within arm’s reach and yet which I can’t grasp—some horrible corollary, you know. My brain is in a whirl, I—I—”