"I believe it, colonel. I have facts and statements, and dying words to prove it. On my father's death-bed, he made my mother swear to tell the truth, to repair the wrong he had done; to seek out his son, concealed by his valet, Vyking, and restore him to his rights! My mother never kept that promise—the cruel wrong done to herself was too bitter; and at my birth she resolved never to keep it. I should not atone for the sin of my father; his elder son should never deprive her child of his birthright. My poor mother! You know the cause of that mysterious trouble which fell upon her at my father's death, and which darkened her life to the last. Shame, remorse, anger—shame for herself—a wife only in name; remorse for her broken vow to the dead, and anger against that erring dead man."
"But you told me she had hunted him up and provided for him," said the mystified colonel.
"Yes; she saw an advertisement in a London paper, calling upon Vyking to take charge of the boy he had left twelve years before. Now Vyking, the valet, had been transported for house-breaking long before that, and my mother answered the advertisement. There could be no doubt the child was the child Vyking had taken charge of—Sir Noel Thetford's rightful heir. My mother left him with the painter, Legard, with whom he grew up, whose name he took; and he is now at Thetford Towers."
"I thought the likeness meant something," muttered the colonel under his mustache, "his paternity is plainly enough written in his face. And so," raising his voice, "Mrs. Weymore recognized her son. Really, your story runs like a melodrama, where the hero turns out to be a duke, and his mother knows the strawberry mark on his arm. Well, sir, if Mrs. Weymore is Sir Noel's rightful widow, and Guy Legard his rightful son and heir—pray what are you?"
The colorless face of the young man turned dark red for an instant, then whiter than before.
"My mother was as truly and really Sir Noel's wife as woman can be the wife of man in the sight of Heaven. The crime was his; the shame and suffering hers; the atonement mine. Sir Noel's elder son shall be Sir Noel's heir—I will play usurper no longer. To-morrow I leave St. Gosport; the day after England, never perhaps, to return."
"You are mad," Colonel Jocyln said, turning very pale; "you do not mean it."
"I am not mad, and I do mean it. I may be unfortunate; but, I pray God, never a villain. Right is right; my brother Guy is the rightful heir—not I."
"And Aileen?" Colonel Jocyln's face turned dark and rigid as iron as he spoke his daughter's name.
Rupert Thetford turned away his changing face.