She paused a moment, then replied, still with that wistful glance on his face:
"Inez Catheron."
"What?" Again he half-started to his feet. "The woman who was my mother's rival and enemy, who made her life wretched, who was concerned in her murder! Whom you aided to escape from Chesholm jail! The woman who, directly or indirectly, is guilty of her death!"
"Sir Victor Catheron, how dare you!" Lady Helen also started to her feet, her face flushing with haughty anger. "I tell you Inez Catheron has been a martyr—not a murderess. She was your mother's rival, as she had a right to be—was she not your father's plighted wife, long before he ever saw Ethel Dobb? She was your mother's rival. It was her only fault, and her whole life has been spent in expiating it. Was it not atonement sufficient, that for the crime of another, she should be branded with life-long infamy, and banished forever from home and friends?"
"If the guilt was not hers it was her brother's, and she was privy to it," the young man retorted, with sullen coldness.
"Who are you, that you should say whether it was or not? The assassin is known to Heaven, and Heaven has dealt with him. Accuse no one—neither Juan Catheron nor his sister—all human judgment is liable to err. Of your mother's death Inez Catheron is innocent—by it her whole life has been blighted. To your father, that life has been consecrated. She has been his nurse, his companion, his more than sister or mother all those years. I loved him, and I could not have done what she has done. He used her brutally—brutally I say—and her revenge has been life-long devotion and sacrifice. All those years she has never left him. She will never leave him until he dies."
She sank back in her seat, trembling, exhausted. He listened in growing wonder.
"You believe me?" she demanded imperiously.
"I believe you," he replied sadly. "My dear aunt, forgive me. I believe all you have said. Can I not see her and thank her too?"
"You shall see her. It is for that she has remained. Stay here; I will send her to you. She deserves your thanks, though all thanks are but empty and vain for such a life-long martyrdom as hers."