Had Bruce been a woman he must have fainted.
As it was, the shock of the intelligence nearly paralyzed him. Sir Charles Dyke!—Montgomery!—The house at Putney the property of his mother! What new terror did not this frightful combination suggest?
Why did his friend conceal from him these most important facts? Why did he pretend ignorance not only of the locality but of his mother’s maiden name? Like lightning the remembrance flashed through Bruce’s troubled brain that he had only heard of the earlier Lady Dyke as a daughter of the Earl of Tilbury. A suspicion—profoundly horrible, yet convincing—was slowly mastering him, and every second brought further proof not only of its reasonableness, but of its ghastly and inflexible certainty.
Again the lawyer’s voice reached his ears, dully and thin, as though it penetrated through a wall.
“Surely, you feel ill? Let me get you some brandy.”
“No—no,” murmured the barrister. “It is but a momentary faintness. I—I think I will go out into the fresh air. Are you—quite sure—that Mr. Childe bought the property from Lady Helen Montgomery’s trustees?”
“Quite sure. If you wait even a few moments I will show you the title-deeds.”
“No, thank you. I will call again. Pray excuse me.”
Somehow Bruce crossed the quiet square of the Inn, and plunged into the turmoil of the street. Amid the bustle of Holborn he had a curious sensation of safety. The fiend so suddenly installed in his consciousness was less busy here suggesting strange and maddening thoughts.
Why—why—why—fifty questions beat incessantly against the barrier of agonized negation he strove to set up, but the noise of traffic made the attack confused. Each incautious bump against a passer-by silenced a demand, each heavy crunch of a ’bus on the gravel-strewed roadway temporarily silenced a doubt.