'I was so little,' said Bela, with a sigh. 'But I loved him—oh! I have always loved him—and I was the last to see him that night.'
'I know!' she said harshly, ashamed meanwhile of her own harshness, for how could the child suspect the torture his words were to her? What had his father given her beautiful boy?—disgraced descent, sullied blood, the heritage of falsehood and of dishonour. Yet the boy loved his memory better than he loved her presence. And the time had been, not so long passed, when she would have recognised the preference with fond and generous delight.
Bela stood beside her, his eyes watching her with timid interrogation, with longing appeal. The look upon his face went to her heart. She knew not what to say to him. She had hoped he would be always silent, and forget, as children usually forget.
'You are right to feel so,' she said to him at last, with a violent effort. 'Cherish his memory, and pray for him always; but do not speak of him to me. When you are grown to manhood, if I be living then, you shall hear what has parted your father and me; you shall judge us yourself. But there are many years to that; many weary years for me. I shall endeavour that they shall be happy ones for you; but you must never ask me, never speak, of him. I gave you that command that night; but you are very young, you have forgotten.'
Bela listened with a sinking heart. He gathered from her words that his father's absence was, as he had feared, for ever.
'I had not forgotten,' he said in a whisper, for the moment was terrible to him. 'But if—if what Gela said should ever be, will you tell me that? I will not disobey again, but pray—pray—tell me that.'
His mother's face seemed to him to grow colder and colder, paler and paler, till she scarcely looked a living woman.
'I will tell you—if I know,' she said, with a pause between each slow spoken word. Then the only smile that had come upon her lips for many months came there; a smile sadder than tears, more bitter than all scorn.
'He will outlive me, fear not,' she said, as she put out her hand to the child. 'Now leave me, my dear; I am occupied.'
Bela touched her hand with his lips, which, despite his will, quivered as he did so. He felt that he had failed, that he had disobeyed and hurt her, that he had been unable to show one tenth of all the feelings which choked him with their force and longing. He hung his head as he went sorrowfully away. 'She may not know! She may not know!' he thought, with terror.