“No wonder he is handsome, with such a mother as that!” gasps Mrs. de Lacy Trevor. “Dodo dear, it’s the same lovely woman we met him riding with on the Burton Course long ago, at Melton, don’t you remember? The mystery’s cleared at last.”
She stops abruptly and stares at her friend, for Lady Manderton is scarcely heeding her, and there are large tears in her fine, handsome eyes.
“Why, what is the matter, Dodo?”
“Nothing, Vivi, nothing! There, don’t attract attention,” she answers hastily.
She is thinking though, how wasted has been her life. She has heard Hector D’Estrange’s statement, and believes it implicitly. She is thinking that others may not, though. If Hector D’Estrange is condemned, well, Dodo Manderton feels that she would die to save him.
CHAPTER IV.
“Mrs. de Lara,” queries Hector D’Estrange, in a voice in which respect and tenderness are mingled, “you have heard the statement for the prosecution in which you and I are accused of undue intimacy? You have heard my reply, in which I declare you to be my mother? Which statement is correct?”
“Yours,” she replies in a firm, clear voice. “I am your mother.”
“And my father?” he again asks.