"It is all lost!" she moaned. "All that I have worked for—my position in the world, my leadership, my career—everything is lost. I shall have shame and disgrace, instead of honour and respect. Oh, I am punished—I am punished! No woman has ever been more punished."
"Perhaps," said the physician, "your punishment is finished. Four and twenty years is a long time."
"I have written out a confession of the whole business," she said wearily: "I had to. I got up in the middle of the night. My husband stood beside me. Oh, I saw him and I heard him. 'Lilias,' he said, 'what you did was in pity and in tenderness to me. I forgive you. All shall be forgiven you if you will confess.' So I sat down and wrote; and here it is." She gave him a paper, which he placed in his inner pocket. "You know what I had to say, doctor. I was young, and I was in agony: my child was dead—oh, my child was dead! No one knows—no man can tell—what it is to lose your only child. All the time I wrote, my husband stood over me, his noble face stern and serious as when he was lieutenant-governor. When I finished, he laid his hand upon my head—I felt it, doctor, I tell you I felt it—and he said, 'Lilias, it is forgiven.' And so he vanished. And now you have got my confession."
"Yes, I have it. Give me—I ask your leave—permission to speak."
"Oh, speak! Cry aloud! Go to the house-top, and call it out! Sing it in the streets! I shall become a byword and a mockery!" She walked about, twisting a handkerchief in her hands. "My friends will have no more to do with me. I have brought shame on my own people!" She panted and gasped; her words came in jerks. "Doctor, I am resolved. I will turn Roman Catholic, and enter a convent. It is for such women as myself that they make convents. There I shall live out the rest of my life, hearing nothing and knowing nothing. And none of the scorn and shame that they will heap upon my name will reach the walls of my retreat."
"You must not think only of yourself, my dear madam. What about Humphrey?"
"He must do what he pleases—what he can. What does it matter what he does? Sir Robert, I assure you that he is a selfish wretch, the most hardened, the most heartless; he thinks about nothing but his own pleasure; under the guise of following Art, he is a cold sensualist. I have never detected in him one single generous thought or word; I have never known him do one single unselfish action. I have never cared for him—now, I declare that it costs me not one single pang to think that he will lose everything. Let the wretch who has made me suffer so much go back to the gutter—his native slime!"
"Stop! stop! my dear madam. Remember, in adopting the boy, you undertook to look after him. Every year that you have had him has increased your responsibilities. You owe it to him that since he was brought up as Sir Humphrey's son, you must make him Sir Humphrey's heir. In other words, whatever happens, you must not let him suffer in fortune."
Lady Woodroffe was silent.
"Do you understand what I mean? You adopted him. He is yours. It is not his fault that he is yours. He may be robbed of his father by this discovery; he cannot be robbed of his education and of the ideas which belong to your position; he may have to recognize for his father a most unworthy, shameful man instead of a most honourable man. Selfish—callous—as he may be, that will surely be misery enough. He must not, at the same time, be deserted by the woman who adopted him."