“Do you not remember?” she continued, leaning forward eagerly, and speaking almost fiercely. “Do you not remember the reason why you left the house where you were born, and which you now wish to sell to strangers?”
John Rex stood dumbfounded, the blood suffusing his temples. He knew that among the secrets of the man whose inheritance he had stolen was one which he had never gained—the secret of that sacrifice to which Lady Devine had once referred—and he felt that this secret was to be revealed to crush him now.
Sarah, trembling also, but more with rage than terror, swept towards Lady Devine. “Speak out!” she said, “if you have anything to say! Of what do you accuse my husband?”
“Of imposture!” cried Lady Devine, all her outraged maternity nerving her to abash her enemy. “This man may be your husband, but he is not my son!”
Now that the worst was out, John Rex, choking with passion, felt all the devil within him rebelling against defeat. “You are mad,” he said. “You have recognized me for three years, and now, because I want to claim that which is my own, you invent this lie. Take care how you provoke me. If I am not your son—you have recognized me as such. I stand upon the law and upon my rights.”
Lady Devine turned swiftly, and with both hands to her bosom, confronted him.
“You shall have your rights! You shall have what the law allows you! Oh, how blind I have been all these years. Persist in your infamous imposture. Call yourself Richard Devine still, and I will tell the world the shameful secret which my son died to hide. Be Richard Devine! Richard Devine was a bastard, and the law allows him—nothing!”
There was no doubting the truth of her words. It was impossible that even a woman whose home had been desecrated, as hers had been, would invent a lie so self-condemning. Yet John Rex forced himself to appear to doubt, and his dry lips asked, “If then your husband was not the father of your son, who was?”
“My cousin, Armigell Esmè Wade, Lord Bellasis,” answered Lady Devine.
John Rex gasped for breath. His hand, tugging at his neck-cloth, rent away the linen that covered his choking throat. The whole horizon of his past was lit up by a lightning flash which stunned him. His brain, already enfeebled by excess, was unable to withstand this last shock. He staggered, and but for the cabinet against which he leant, would have fallen. The secret thoughts of his heart rose to his lips, and were uttered unconsciously. “Lord Bellasis! He was my father also, and—I killed him!”