Carlotta had written to the lawyers, asking them what would happen to the child in the event of her death, with regard to the allowance. Curtis was dead, and she received a formal answer that the sum paid was a personal grant and would cease at her death.
So she lived as simply as possible, that Roy should not go penniless when her time came, and the Doctor was convinced that this fear more than anything else kept her alive.
Roy was fifteen, a fine clean looking boy, with his mother’s eyes and his father’s classical beauty, untouched with his sardonic smile. Halley had carefully taught him all he knew, which was wide knowledge. Carlotta had insisted on making Italian his mother tongue, and never spoke English herself—if spoken to in that language, would answer in Italian. She would also write in Italian, and only once broke her self-imposed edict, when she handed a miniature of herself and the boy to Halley, under which she had written “Mother and Roy.” Halley looked at it in surprise, but she simply said, “In case you ever meet him when I am gone.” The curious doubt about her husband’s death distressed him, but seemed to give her a strange comfort.
But her time had come; all Halley’s devotion and medical skill availed nothing against her broken heart, though there was no specific disease that he could find. She was merely fading like a flower after the summer is done. She called him to her, while the boy was playing in the garden.
“My old and faithful friend, the best friend I ever knew, the end has come, and you know it. Don’t worry, it is all for the best. My loneliness is such a torment, that only your great affection, and Roy’s, could have made me stay so long. I am going to ask of you one more service, as we always do of those who have served only too well, you will look after Roy, won’t you?”
The old Doctor’s head was bowed, and he did not dare to show his face, he merely nodded, and kneeling by her side, took her thin hand.
“I want you to see that he grows up an English gentleman, as befits his birth,” she raised her head proudly, as if in challenge.
“I will devote what remains of my life to him,” said the old man simply.
She pressed his hand. “Thank you, I knew I could rely on you, and you must tell him after I have gone—you know—about his father. I could not bear to do it. I should hate to see a look of anger or loathing on his young face. You will understand?”
“I will do it, you may trust to me,” he said in a shaking voice.