“But now that you are well again?” she asked.
“Now that I am well again—I thank Heaven that it will be too late. The opportunity that was ours is lost. His—my father should now be beyond our power.”
There ensued a spell of silence. He sat with eyes averted from her face—those eyes which she had never known other than whimsical and mocking, now full of gloom and pain—riveted upon the glare of sunshine on the pond out yonder. A great sympathy welled up from her heart for this man whom she was still far from understanding, and who, nevertheless—because of it, perhaps, for there is much fascination in that which puzzles—was already growing very dear to her. The story he had told her drew her infinitely closer to him, softening her heart for him even more perhaps than it had already been softened when she had seen him—as she had thought—upon the point of dying. A wonder flitted through her mind as to why he had told her; then another question surged. She gave it tongue.
“You have told me so much, Mr. Caryll,” she said, “that I am emboldened to ask something more.” His eyes invited her to put her question. “Your—your father? Was he related to Lord Ostermore?”
Not a muscle of his face moved. “Why that?” he asked.
“Because your name is Caryll,” said she.
“My name?” he laughed softly and bitterly. “My name?” He reached for an ebony cane that stood beside his chair. “I had thought you understood.” He heaved himself to his feet, and she forgot to caution him against exertion. “I have no right to any name,” he told her. “My father was a man too full of worldly affairs to think of trifles. And so it befell that before he went his ways he forgot to marry the poor lady who was my mother. I might take what name I chose. I chose Caryll. But you will understand, Mistress Winthrop,” and he looked her fully in the face, attempting in vain to dissemble the agony in his eyes—he who a little while ago had been almost happy—“that if ever it should happen that I should come to love a woman who is worthy of being loved, I who am nameless have no name to offer her.”
Revelation illumined her mind as in a flash. She looked at him.
“Was—was that what you meant, that day we thought you dying, when you said to me—for it was to me you spoke, to me alone—that it was better so?”
He inclined his head. “That is what I meant,” he answered.