She could tell Geoffrey nothing more regarding the identity of his father than he already knew. She had never seen him since his last visit to her home, more than a year previous to the tragedy, and she had never known any other address than the one of which Mr. Bruce had spoken. He had told her to send a letter to “Lock Box 43, Santa Fe,” if anything should ever happen to his boy, and she wished to summon him.
But she had gone away without communicating with him; she had been eager to get away before he could come again, for she had not courage to meet him and tell him the dreadful story about his child, which she alone knew.
“Margery,” Geoffrey said, gravely, after she had concluded her account, “have you never thought that there was something very strange in the fact that my father should have been so reserved about himself, and kept his only child so remote and concealed from all his friends?”
“Yes, Master Geoffrey, it did strike me as queer, at times; but I reasoned that perhaps he hadn’t any very near friends, for he talked of putting you to some school as soon as you were old enough to go away from me.”
“Do you think that everything was all right between him and my mother?”
“How right, sir?” the woman asked, with surprise.
“Do you think that they were legally married? Did you never see or hear anything while you lived with them, to make you suspect that they might not be husband and wife? It is a hard question for a son to ask, but the secrecy, with which my father has seemed to hedge himself about, has led me to fear that there was some grave reason why he could not, or would not, have me with him and openly recognize me. Why was he unwilling to have you use his name if you had occasion to write to him, but instead gave you a blind address, which no one could recognize, and to which, doubtless, he alone had the key?”
“Good lord, Master Geoffrey, never have any such thoughts entered my head before!” Margery exclaimed, in a tone of startled amazement. “I never saw a man fonder of his wife than Captain Dale was of your mother; and he had reason to be fond of her, too, for she worshiped the very air he breathed, and was always so sweet and merry that a man would have been a brute not to have loved her. But——”
“Well?” queried Geoffrey, eagerly, the hot blood surging to his brow, with a feeling of dread, as she stopped, a note of sudden conviction in her tone.
“Well, I do remember, once, that she did not seem quite happy, but I have never given it a second thought until now,” Margery said, reflectively.