Not till she had resumed her seat did John Clare speak again. “What you wrote me about the child was a lie?” he said presently. It might be taken either as a question or an assertion.
“Yes—a lie,” she replied with a little shrug. “It is as well at times to call things by their right names.”
“And the certificate you sent me?”
“A forgery. Five dollars was the price I paid for it.”
“But what was your object, if I may ask, or what was to be gained by inducing me to believe that the child was dead?”
“After I had made up my mind to leave you and go back to Italy, my one fear was that you would come after me and rob me of the child. To keep you from doing that I invented the story of its death. Myself alone, after the letter I had written you, I knew you would not trouble yourself to come after.”
“Never was there a more heartless and cruel fraud perpetrated on anyone!” For the first time his voice vibrated with a suppressed emotion. Not for a little while would he trust himself to say more. Giovanna’s only reply was a slight lifting of her brows.
“When you grew better and left the hospital did you make no effort to recover your child?” demanded John as soon as he felt that he could command himself sufficiently to speak again.
“I made every effort a woman in my position could make. You must remember that I had been robbed of money, clothes, everything. I was utterly destitute. Some charitable people interested themselves in my case and the police were communicated with, but nothing came of their inquiries. Then a wild notion took hold of me that the woman, in the belief that I was past recovery, might have made her way to Italy with the child, and that I should find it under my father’s roof when I got back to Catanzaro. The same charitable people found me enough money to take me home; but as you know, neither the woman nor my child was there. After that, rather than be called upon to tell and tell again the history of that time, I preferred to give it out that my child was dead. To my father alone was the truth known.”
She ceased, and to John Clare it seemed that there was nothing more to be said. He had learnt all that he had come to learn. The missing links had been found; not one was wanting; the chain was complete.