Silence tingled between them.
Then, unsteadily, and looking always at his father, John began to speak. "Of course it makes no difference to me. Aunt Lydia and I have our own life. But—I'm sorry, sir." He put his shaking hands into his pockets. "You and Mrs. Robertson—"
"Oh, say 'mother'! Say 'mother'!" she cried out.
"—have been very kind to me, always,"—he paused, in a sudden, realizing adjustment: their "kindness," then, had not been the flattery he had supposed? It was just—love? "Awfully kind," he said, huskily. "Once I did wonder . . . then I thought it couldn't be, because—because, you see, I've always liked you, sir," he ended, awkwardly.
Carl Robertson was dumb.
"I've told you," his mother said, trembling—her fingers, catching at the sheet of blotting paper on desk, tore off a scrap of it, rolled it, twisted it, then pull off another scrap—"I've told you, because you are to come to us. You are to take our name—your name." She paused, swallowing hard, and struggling to keep the tears back. "You are ours, not hers. People thought you were hers, and it just about killed me."
Instantly the blood rushed into John Smith's face; his eyes blazed. "What!" he stammered; "what! You knew that?" . . . His upper lip slowly lifted, and Doctor Lavendar saw his set teeth. "You knew that some damned fools thought that, of my aunt Lydia? Are you my mother, and yet you could allow another woman— My God!" he said, softly.
She did not realize what she had done; she began to reassure him frantically.
"No one shall ever know! No one will ever guess—"
Doctor Lavendar shook his head. "Mary," he warned her, "we must be known, even as also we know, before we enter the Kingdom of Heaven."