“But ye don't name them,” said her ladyship, attempting to conquer her uneasiness.
“I shall do so,” said he, and turned again to his lordship. “I had no cause to love you that morning, nor at any time, my lord; I had no cause to think—as even you in your heart must realize, if so be that you have a heart, and the intelligence to examine it—I had no cause to think, my lord, that I should be doing other than a good deed by letting drive my blade. That such an opinion was well founded was proven by the thing you did when I turned my back upon you after sparing your useless life.”
Rotherby broke in tempestuously, smiting the desk before him. “If you think to move us to mercy by such—”
“Oh, not to mercy would I move you,” said Mr. Caryll, his hand raised to stay the other, “not to mercy, but to horror of the thing you contemplate.” And then, in an oddly impressive manner, he launched his thunderbolt. “Know, then, that if that morning I would not spill your blood, it was because I should have been spilling the same blood that flows in my own veins; it was because you are my brother; because your father was my father. No less than that was the reason that withheld my hand.”
He had announced his aim of moving them to horror; and it was plain that he had not missed it, for in frozen horror sat they all, their eyes upon him, their cheeks ashen, their mouths agape—even Hortensia, who from what already Mr. Caryll had told her, understood now more than any of them.
After a spell Rotherby spoke. “You are my brother?” he said, his voice colorless. “My brother? What are you saying?”
And then her ladyship found her voice. “Who was your mother?” she inquired, and her very tone was an insult, not to the man who sat there so much as to the memory of poor Antoinette de Maligny. He flushed to the temples, then paled again.
“I'll not name her to your ladyship,” said he at, last, in a cold, imperious voice.
“I'm glad ye've so much decency,” she countered.
“You mistake, I think,” said he. “'Tis respect for my mother that inspires me.” And his green eyes flashed upon the painted hag. She rose up a very fury.