The elder woman broke into frightened weeping. The younger grew pale and paler: grew presently white to the lips. Still her eyes met his, and did not flinch. 'Is it--about our case?' she whispered.
'Yes! Oh, my dear, will you ever forgive me?'
'About my birth?'
He nodded.
'I am not Julia Soane? Is that it?'
He nodded again.
'Not a Soane--at all?'
'No; God forgive me, no!'
She continued to hold the weeping woman's hand in hers, and to look at him; but for a long minute she seemed not even to breathe. Then in a voice that, notwithstanding the effort she made, sounded harsh in his ears, 'Tell me all,' she muttered. 'I suppose--you have found something!'
'I have,' he said. He looked old, and worn, and shabby; and was at once the surest and the saddest corroboration of his own tidings. 'Two days ago I found, by accident, in a church at Bristol, the death certificate of the--of the child.'