“By God, you can’t tell me anything that will make a difference!” Tom said, deep in his throat, still in the same position and without moving his eyes. “You keep your hands off her—keep out of my affairs!”
“David—don’t be angry with him,” Gabrielle pleaded. “Don’t be angry with him! It’s partly my fault—it’s partly my fault!”
“Angry with him?” David echoed. “My dear Gay—Tom—you mustn’t be angry with me. Aunt Flora just told me something, Tom. Gay’s father was not the man named Charpentier—as we had all believed! Uncle Roger never knew it—but Gay is your half-sister, Tom—born in the year after you ran away, when he was hunting all over the world for you.”
“What are you talking about?” Tom said, in a terrible voice. Gabrielle, her face ashen in the lamplight, was staring at David with dilated eyes. Now through her parted lips she breathed with utter horror:
“No—David, no——!”
“It’s true,” David said, simply. “There’s a curse upon the place, I think, and upon us all! It has killed them—one after the other; it is killing Aunt Flora now. Gay—Tom, old fellow, we have to pay with the rest! You must believe it. You’re brother and sister, Tom.”
Then for a long time there was silence in the room.
“Who told you that?” Tom asked then, in a sharp, sneering voice that cut through the unbroken stillness and the surrounding tumult of the storm. And instantly he added, in a changed tone: “Look out for her, David—she’s falling!”
Gabrielle indeed, with a long deep sob that ended with a sigh, had pitched against his shoulder. David caught her in his arms, her eyes were shut, and her whole body hung limp, her beautiful tawny hair falling free.
“Help me get her downstairs, Tom!” David said, everything else forgotten, brushing the silky, tawny tangle from her face and taking her in a firmer hold. “Open the door.”