He made no answer. He gazed upon her with troubled eyes.
"Tell me, doctor," she said, "what I must do."
"Will you do, then, what I advise?"
"If you will only save my son from his mother. It's a dreadful thing to say. Doctor, I would rather lose the boy altogether than think that he hates and despises his mother."
"When you put the child into my hands, when you undertook to make no inquiry after him in the future—then you lost your child. I told you so two months ago, when this inquiry began. Nothing but mischief could come of it—mischief, and misery, and hatred, and shame, and disappointment. This you could not understand. Now you do."
She sighed. "Yes, I understand."
"Our duty is plain—to hold our tongues. Humphrey will remain where he is. It is a family secret, which will die with us."
"And is he—Dick's brother—to go on holding the place to which he has no right?" asked Molly.
"There will be no change. It is a family secret," he repeated. "A close family secret, never to be whispered even among yourselves."
"He must never know," said Alice. "Yet I must speak to him once; I must hold his hand in mine once."