He paused a moment, and he saw that the eyes of Gervase were fixed upon him, but he saw no sympathy for his dead mother in them. Perhaps he did not expect to see any!
"How she explained matters to the relation she lived with, I do not know," he went on; "but they were married in that year in London."
"At what church?" Gervase asked.
"At 'St. Jude's, Marylebone.' Here is the certificate." Gervase took it, glanced at it, and returned it to him.
"Go on," he said, and his voice too had changed.
"They lived a wandering kind of life, but, in those days, a not altogether unhappy one. But at last he wearied of it--wearied of living in continental towns to which no one of their own country ever came, or in gay ones where they passed under an assumed name, that which had been her maiden name--Cundall. At my birth he became more genial for a year or so, and then again he relapsed into his moody and morose state--a state that had become almost natural to him. He began to see that the secret could not be kept for ever, now that he had a son; that some day, if I lived, I must become Lord Penlyn. And he did not disguise his forebodings from her, nor attempt to throw off his gloom. She bore with him patiently for a long while--bore his repinings and taunts; but at last she told him that, after all, there was no such great necessity for secrecy, that she was a lady by birth, a wife of whom he need not be ashamed. Then--then he cursed her; and on the next occasion of their dispute he told her that they had better live apart.
"She took him at his word, and when he woke the next morning she was gone, taking me with her. He never saw her nor me again, and when he heard that she was dead he believed that I was dead also."
"Then he was the deceived and not the deceiver!" Gervase exclaimed. "He thought that I was really his son and heir."
"Yes, he thought so. My mother's only other relative in the world was her brother, a merchant in Honduras, who was fast amassing a stupendous fortune--the one I now possess. She wrote to him telling him that she had married, that her husband had treated her badly, and that she had left him and resumed her maiden name. His name she never would reveal. My uncle wrote to say that in such circumstances, and being an unmarried man, he would adopt me as his own child, and that I should eventually be his heir. Then he sent money over for my schooling and bringing up."
He paused again, and again he went on; and it seemed as if he was mustering himself for a final effort.