“I don’t forget it,” she answered. “I can only wish that my promise would keep back the thoughts that come to me in spite of myself.”
“What thoughts?”
“There is something, as I fear, in the story of my parents which you are afraid to confide to me. Why did Mr. Gracedieu allow me to believe and leave everybody to believe, that I was his own child?”
“My dear, I relieved your mind of those doubts on the morning of your marriage.”
“No. I was only thinking of myself at that time. My mother—the doubt of her is the doubt that torments me now.”
“What do you mean?”
She put her arm in mine, and held by it with both hands.
“The mock-mother!” she whispered. “Do you remember that dreadful Vision, that horrid whispering temptation in the dead of night? Was it a mock-mother? Oh, pity me! I don’t know who my mother was. One horrid thought about her is a burden on my mind. If she was a good woman, you who love me would surely have made me happy by speaking of her?”
Those words decided me at last. Could she suffer more than she had suffered already, if I trusted her with the truth? I ran the risk. There was a time of silence that filled me with terror. The interval passed. She took my hand, and put it to her heart. “Does it beat as if I was frightened?” she asked.
No! It was beating calmly.