She would meet it face to face. She stood up as though she had been going to throttle some visible foe for ever: "I shall tell you the truth, Catharine. Your father has never known it. He believes his son died in Nicaragua fighting for a cause which he thought good. I let him believe it. There was some comfort in that."
"It was not true, then?"
"No." She rearranged the vases on the mantel-shelf, turned over the illuminated texts hanging on the wall, until she came to the one for the day. She was trying to convince herself that Hugh Guinness mattered nothing to her.
"He died," she said at last, "in New York, a reprobate, as he lived."
"But where? how?"
"What can that matter to you?" sharply. "But I will tell you where and how. Two winters ago a poor, bloated, penniless wretch took up his lodging in a cheap hotel in New York. He left it only to visit the gambling-houses near. An old friend of mine recognized Hugh, and warned me of his whereabouts. I went up to the city at once, but when I reached it he had disappeared. He had lost his last penny at dice."
"Then he is still alive?"
"God forbid! No," correcting herself. "A week later the body of a suicide was recovered off Coney Island and placed in the Morgue. It was horribly mutilated. But I knew Hugh Guinness. I think I see him yet, lying on that marble slab and his eyes staring up at me. It was no doing of mine that he lay there."
"No, mother, I am sure that it was not," gently. "If your conscience reproaches you, I wish he were here that you could try and bring him into the right path at last."
"My conscience does not trouble me. As for Hugh—Heaven forbid that I should judge any man!—but if ever there was a son of wrath predestined to perdition, it was he. I always felt his day of grace must have passed while he was still a child."