"Before you thought of coming to me?"
She assented. A long pause followed, during which Miss Alcott came in, administered stimulant, and whispered to Buntingford to let her rest a little. He sat there beside her motionless, for half an hour or more, unconscious of the passage of time, his thoughts searching the past, and then again grappling dully with the extraordinary, the incredible statement that he possessed a son—a living but, apparently, an idiot son. The light began to fail, and Miss Alcott slipped in noiselessly again to light a small lamp out of sight of the patient. "The doctor will soon be here," she whispered to Buntingford.
The light of the lamp roused the woman. She made a sign to Miss Alcott to lift her a little.
"Not much," said the Rector's sister in Buntingford's ear. "It's the heart that's wrong."
Together they raised her just a little. Miss Alcott put a fan into
Buntingford's hands, and opened the windows wider.
"I'm all right," said the stranger irritably. "Let me alone. I've got a lot to say." She turned her eyes on Buntingford. "Do you want to know—about Rocca?"
"Yes."
"He died seven years ago. He was always good to me—awfully good to me and to the boy. We lived in a horrible out-of-the-way place—up in the mountains near Naples. I didn't want you to know about the boy. I wanted revenge. Rocca changed his name to Melegrani. I called myself Francesca Melegrani. I used to exhibit both at Naples and Rome. Nobody ever found out who we were."
"What made you put that notice in the Times?"
She smiled faintly, and the smile recalled to him an old expression of hers, half-cynical, half-defiant.