"Wait!" commanded his father, hoarsely. "It was my fault! I didn't know her—I didn't understand her! My neglect drove her to it. She went off with a lover!"
Raymond pressed his hands to his face and crouched against the broad desk as if the blow had physically crushed him.
"But there is worse than that!" cried Floriot, rising. "She came back to me and begged for forgiveness. She groveled at my feet and pleaded for mercy! She made me see that I shared the blame of her fall! But my cheap, foolish pride conquered every other feeling—every instinct of pity, every impulse of nobility! And I threw her out into the street!"
The boy straightened up with a sob of anguish.
"And—and—what became—of her?" he panted.
Floriot's left hand went up to his throat as if he felt himself choking. He turned his head away, and with a terrible effort raised his other hand, pointed to the door of the President's room and gasped brokenly:
"She is there! That woman—is—your mother!"
Raymond swayed on his feet and his father's rigid figure swam in a haze before his eyes. His, mother! That woman his mother! In the hundred emotions that swept him in the ghost of a second only one was missing—shame for her stained body and blackened soul. His heart—starved all its life—quivered with a joy that was almost pain at the thought at last it would feel the love of even such a mother, as the lost and parched wanderer in the desert falls with a prayer of thanksgiving at the edge of a brackish pool.
With a choking cry of "Mother!" he stumbled blindly to the door. The instant he rushed into the room, Dr. Chennel and Noel saw what had happened, and the former was in front of him in a stride.
"Be careful!" he warned, in a stern whisper that brought the boy to his senses like a dash of cold water. "Any strong excitement may be too? much for her!"