“But you didn’t come,” moaned the woman, “and you wouldn’t have come now if I hadn’t worked a charm to bring you.”
“There you wrong me,” said Kester, decisively. “Your charm, or spell, or whatever it may have been, had no effect in bringing me here. I came of my own free will.”
“Self-conceited, as you always were and always will be,” muttered the woman. Then, half raising herself in bed, and addressing the girl, she cried: “Nell, you hussy, just you hook it for a quarter of an hour. The gent and I have something to talk about.”
The girl rose sullenly, went slowly out, and banged the door behind her.
Kester wondered what was coming next. He had dropped the woman’s hand, but she now held it out for him to take again. He took it, and she pressed his hand passionately to her lips three or four times.
“If the great secret of my life is to be told at all on this side the grave, the time to tell it is now come. I always thought to die without revealing it, but somehow of late everything has seemed different to me, and I feel now as if I couldn’t die easy without telling you.” She paused for a minute, exhausted. There was some brandy on the chimney-piece, and Kester gave her a little. Again she took his hand and kissed it passionately.
“You will, perhaps, curse me for what I am about to tell you,” she went on, “but whether you do so or not, so may Heaven help me if it is anything more than the simple truth! Kester St. George, you have no right to the name you bear—to the name the world knows you by!”
Kester was so startled that for a moment or two he sat like one suddenly stricken dumb. “Go on,” he said at last. “There’s more to follow. I like boldness in lying as in everything else.”
“Again I swear that I am telling you no more than the solemn truth.”
“If I am not Kester St. George,” he said with a sneer, “perhaps you will kindly inform me who I really am.”