“Mother, I have something to ask you,” he said. Her eyes wandered vaguely about the room. She made no answer. “Tell me the truth. I have a right to know. Were you married to my father?”
She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief. The terrible moment, the moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had dreaded, had come at last, and yet she felt no terror. Indeed, in some measure it was a disappointment to her. The vulgar directness of the question called for a direct answer. The situation had not been gradually led up to. It was crude. It reminded her of a bad rehearsal.
“No,” she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life.
“My father was a scoundrel then!” cried the lad, clenching his fists.
She shook her head. “I knew he was not free. We loved each other very much. If he had lived, he would have made provision for us. Don’t speak against him, my son. He was your father, and a gentleman. Indeed, he was highly connected.”
An oath broke from his lips. “I don’t care for myself,” he exclaimed, “but don’t let Sibyl. … It is a gentleman, isn’t it, who is in love with her, or says he is? Highly connected, too, I suppose.”
For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman. Her head drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking hands. “Sibyl has a mother,” she murmured; “I had none.”
The lad was touched. He went towards her, and stooping down, he kissed her. “I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about my father,” he said, “but I could not help it. I must go now. Goodbye. Don’t forget that you will have only one child now to look after, and believe me that if this man wrongs my sister, I will find out who he is, track him down, and kill him like a dog. I swear it.”