"This is for Judge Bolitho," she said, and then, entering the cab which waited for her, she drove quickly to Dixon Street. Arriving there she found Paul's mother was ready for her, and ere long they were in the train bound for Brunford.
During the journey scarcely a word passed between them. Mary was busy with her own thoughts. She was trying to bring some order out of the confusion of the events which had been narrated to her. Everything was altered. If what the woman had told her was true—and in spite of everything she believed it was—then Paul was her half-brother; and if Paul were her half-brother and his mother were still alive, then, then——
But she would not trouble about this, bewildering as it was. What mattered her own future? What mattered what the world might say? Her first business was to save Paul, and save him she would, at all hazards. She looked at her companion, who sat near to her staring into vacancy. Mary's excited imagination began to conjure up wild fancies as she looked. She thought of what Paul's mother must have been twenty-five years before, tried to picture her as a girl. Yes, she must have been very beautiful, and might easily have attracted such a young man as her father was at the time. She fancied the two up among the bare Scottish hills, saw the flash of the young girl's eyes when the stranger told her he loved her, realised the throbbing of her heart, the joy, the wonder which must have possessed her when she promised to be his wife. For the moment all the grim realities of the present seemed to retire to the background. She lived in the world of fancy, of imagination, and the poetry and the romance of the past became very beautiful to her. Strange to say, her own part in the affair did not for the moment trouble her. The terrible logic of events were not yet real to her. By and by they would appear to her in all their ghastly nakedness, but now they did not seem to matter.
"If I am going to be ill," said Paul's mother, "you'll stay with me, won't you?"
"Yes," she replied, not realising what the words might mean.
"You see I shall be all alone. I have no friends in Brunford. Many would have liked to be friends with me for Paul's sake, but I kept them all at a distance. You see I waited until my name was cleared, and it will soon be cleared now."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, he knows, he knows everything—I mean your father. He's afraid of Paul, I know he is; he always has been. It's strange that Paul is not anything like him, isn't it? Paul has black hair and black eyes, just as I have. He's my boy, my boy! Thank God for that! And they can't harm him, can they? You are sure of that."
Mary was silent. The meaning of the work she had to do became real to her now. She, too, believed that no harm could come to Paul, but she realised the cost of his salvation. Paul could never be saved until the true murderer was found and proved to be the murderer.
"I am afraid I am going to be ill," went on the older woman. "These last few weeks have been too much for me. And you've promised to stay with me, haven't you?"