"A mulatto?" she said faintly.
"Yes—almost a nigger, Mr. Harris says. He's ashamed—I could tell, though he tried to sound casual. Of course it isn't nice for him to have a half-brother like that, is it? And then his mother doing such a thing! I was awfully sorry for him, poor fellow—he did look so uncomfortable while he was talking. Of course he hung on to his brother's cleverness and all that, but——Well, he can't be very proud, can he?"
Bee made no answer; she did not hear. "A mulatto—almost a nigger." For an instant her mind was dwarfed by it. She could not think beyond it, could see no further than the monstrous personality that seemed to close upon her. "Almost a nigger." The instant was heavy, affrighting with his presence. In the next, her thoughts flashed to the mulatto who had gone to Godstone—and she knew that he was the man.
"He must look rather like that Mr. Tremlett, I suppose," Hilda was saying.
She nodded. "Yes."
"Fancy a nigger writing poetry! You don't seem very interested? I thought you'd gasp when I told you—you liked his book so much."
"Did you? Oh, I am interested. Yes, fancy his writing poetry.'"
She felt sick, stupefied; she could not talk. David Lee was a mulatto; was the poor young man with the swarthy skin and the negro features whom she had pitied condescendingly, whom she had passed, and repassed, and addressed with no emotion. She sat struggling with the thing. She did not doubt it, she never questioned it for a moment; it was so obvious now that she even wondered that she had not suspected it then; but anomalously David seemed for the first time strange to her, remote. The association dazed her, and before the physical impression all the sense of familiarity receded.
"Tremlett" was David Lee. He had been to seek her. As the cloud of her confusion lifted, she saw the reason of his long delay, saw why, at last, he had assumed a name. Light was shed upon his work; its sorrow was illumined, she understood the secret of its intimate appeal. Like herself, he suffered and was despised.
He had been to seek her, afraid to tell her who he was. Her? No, not her—Hilda! She stared across the room at her sister blankly: Hilda had renounced the effort at conversation, and was in a love-reverie over a novelette. It was Hilda he had been to seek, attracted by her photograph! He had gone at last not to find the writer of the letters, but the girl whose likeness he had seen. Only when the likeness reached him had he cared to go! And he had followed Hilda about the garden, looked at her with his heart in his eyes—he was fond of her. Yes, it was to Hilda that his letters were really written now—and Hilda would probably marry his half-brother!