"Are you a strong man?" he asked. "Do you think you can bear a sudden shock?"
"I do not know what you mean, nor what you are driving at!" Lord Penlyn said, beginning to lose his temper at these strange hints and questions. "I am sorry for your disappointment, in one way, but it is not in your power, nor in that of any one else, to come between the love Miss Raughton and I bear to each other."
"Unfortunately it is in my power and I must do it--temporarily, at least. At present, you cannot marry Miss Raughton."
"What! Why not, sir? For what reason, pray?"
"Do not excite yourself! Because she and her father imagine that she is engaged to Lord Penlyn, and----"
"What the devil do you mean, sir?" the other interrupted furiously.
"And," Cundall went on, without noticing the interruption, "you are not Lord Penlyn!"
"It is a lie!" the other said, springing at him in the dusk that had now set in, "and I will kill you for it." But Cundall caught him in a grasp of iron and pushed him back, as he said hoarsely: "It is the truth, I swear it before Heaven! Your father had another wife who died before he married your mother, and he left a son by her. That man is Lord Penlyn."
Gervase Occleve took a step back and reeled on to a seat in the walk. In a moment there came back to his mind the inn at Le Vocq, the Livre des Étrangers there in which he had seen that strange entry, and the landlord's tale. So that woman was his wife and that son a lawful one, instead of the outcast and nameless creature he had pictured him in his mind! But--was this story true?
He rose again and stood before Cundall, and said: