The minute-hand of the clock on the mantelpiece had made a complete circuit since John had dropped the letters into the fire, yet he had not stirred from the armchair into which he had staggered the moment afterwards.
His fixed eyes looked straight in front of him. His lips moved at intervals.
"I am illegitimate," he said to himself, over and over again.
But no, it was a nightmare, an hallucination of illness. How many delusions he had had during the last few weeks! He should wake up presently and find he had been torturing himself for nothing. If only Mitty would come back! He should laugh at himself presently.
In the mean while, and as it were in spite of himself, certain facts were taking a new significance, were arranging themselves into an unexpected, horrible sequence. Link joined itself to link, and lengthened to a chain.
He remembered his father's evident dislike of him; he remembered how Colonel Tempest had contested the succession when he died. As he had lost the case, John had supposed, when he came to an age to suppose anything, that the slander was without foundation, especially as Mr. Tempest had recognized him as his son. He had known of its existence, of course, but, like the rest of the world, had half forgotten it. That Lord Frederick Fane (evidently the Freddie of the letters) was even his supposed father, had never crossed his mind. If he was like the Fanes, why should he not be so? He might as naturally resemble his mother's as his father's family. He recalled Colonel Tempest's inveterate dislike of him, Archie's thankless reception of anything and everything he did for him.
"I believe," said John, in astonished recollection of divers passages between himself and them—"I believe they think I know all the time, and am deliberately keeping them out."
That, then, was the reason why Mr. Tempest had not discarded him. To recognize him as his son was his surest means of striking at the hated brother who came next in the entail.
"I was made use of," said John, grinding his teeth.