'I am all right, thanks,' said Peter, without looking up. And Ross went out to the patio and left him alone.
'I must go a long way back to make myself intelligible,' the letter went on. 'I suppose people of Spanish descent are generally credited with an unforgiving spirit. I have never forgiven my sister-in-law. I did not at first attempt revenge, possibly because there was only one way in which I could deprive her and her children of their inheritance. That way was denied me. My eldest boy died at his birth, and the girl only lived a few weeks. After that I had no other children. I think the grief this caused entered into both our lives with a bitterness which is unusual, and which I shall not attempt to recall. I shall only say that we both mourned it, and that Lionel Ogilvie and his wife by their conduct made what might have been merely a sorrow a matter also of almost unbearable disappointment. I mention this regrettable emotional feeling in order to make my subsequent conduct intelligible to you. In the course of years, during which your father hardly attended to any matters concerning the property, because it would seem to be benefiting his legal successors, I urged him to go abroad on an exploring expedition such as he loved, hoping in some way to mitigate his disappointment or keep him from dwelling upon it. I have probably not conveyed to you how deep the quarrel was between him and his brother; but if I have not done so it is not of any great importance.
'When your father had sailed for Central Africa I went out to Spain to visit my property there, and I took a sea-voyage to Lisbon for the benefit of my health. There was a young couple in the steerage of the boat going out to settle in Argentine. They were people of the working class and very poor, and before we reached Lisbon, on the night of a storm, the woman gave birth to a child and died, and the father was left to start life in an unknown country with a helpless infant dependent upon him. Some kind-hearted people on board the steamer made up a subscription for him, with the English people's quaint notion that all grief can be assuaged with food or money; and one night when I was on deck alone the stewardess brought me the baby to see.
'When we got into Lisbon the following day I offered the man to adopt the child; and when my maid returned to England I got a Spanish woman for him, and took him with me to my own estate. He was greeted everywhere as my son, and allowing myself the luxury of the small deception, I pretended to myself that he really was mine; but weeks passed before I ever dreamed of deceiving anybody else on the subject. It was a letter which my sister-in-law wrote to me which decided me to stay out in Granada during my husband's two years' absence, and to announce, in course of time, that I was the mother of a son. The plan was quite stupidly easy, and everything lent itself to the deception. The child was fair, and not unlike the Ogilvies, and his father had given him up entirely to me, on the understanding that he was never to claim him again. It may seem strange to you, but it is a fact that after I returned to England there was not the vaguest suspicion in any one's mind that he was not my own child. When my husband returned from abroad I was convinced, if I had ever doubted it, that I had acted wisely. Under the circumstances I should act in the same way again.
'Of course events proved that I had made a mistake; but I had in the meantime made my husband perfectly happy and my sister-in-law perfectly miserable, and that was what I desired.
'You were born a year after your father's return home, and when the other child was three years old. To say that I then found myself in an intolerable position would not be to overstate the case. If your father had lived, my difficulties would have been greater than they actually were, and it was during his lifetime and after your birth that I suffered most. I suppose only a woman, and one, moreover, who has longed for children, would be able to realize what my feelings were, and I shall not urge your compassion by dwelling upon that time. I have never accepted pity, and I should prefer not to have it bestowed upon me when I am dead.
'It was only after your father's death that I saw a way of escape out of the intolerable position in which I had placed myself. I was in very bad health for a time, and my husband's affection for the alien child was more than I was able to bear. There is always a touch of the savage in motherhood, and I am naturally jealous.
'After my husband's death I went out to my own property in Spain, and by judiciously moving about there from one place to another, and changing my personal servants frequently, it was a comparatively easy matter to say that the child had died, without exactly specifying where his death had taken place.
'It was absolutely necessary that he should be got rid of. A pauper emigrant's boy was taking the place of my son in everything. The very tenants about the place treated him differently from the way in which they treated you. My husband had decided that the bilk of his property was to go to him; and all the time I knew that his father was from the class from which perhaps, navvies are drawn, and that his mother was some girl from Whitechapel or Mile End.
'He had to go, but I treated him fairly. I took him down to Lisbon myself and sent him back to his father with a trustworthy couple who were going out there. From my own private fortune I bestowed upon him a sum sufficient to educate him and to place him in the world.