Mrs. Wedmore tried to interpose and to change the conversation to another subject, but Dudley said:
"I would rather explain now, once and for all. I shall be going away to-morrow, and there are several things which I should like to make clear first." He paused, and Mrs. Wedmore, her daughters and the nurse took the opportunity to leave the room. "Now, Mr. Wedmore, tell me what you want to know."
"Well, you told us nothing about your father's being alive and back in England, for one thing."
"It was by his wish that I kept it a secret. He persisted that he was sane; he seemed to be sane. But he believed that if it were known that he was in England he would be shut up."
"But the passing himself off as an old woman, this living in a sort of underground way, didn't that look like madness?"
"I took it for eccentricity and nothing more, until--until he sent for me one day, and brought me suddenly into a room--a little dark, bare room--where there was a man lying on the ground asleep, as I thought. My father told me to bring him into the next room, and--when I stooped to touch him"--Dudley shuddered at the ghastly recollection--"my hands were covered with blood."
"Yes. And from that time he seemed a different man. I saw that he was mad. I tried to persuade him to give himself up, to let himself be put under restraint. I laid traps for him, trying to take him to an asylum. But he was too cunning for me, and all I got by it was to rouse in him a bitter feeling of hatred of myself."
"Why didn't you give information--to the police, if necessary?"
"How could I? My own father! I believed he would be hanged if he was caught. I believe so still. The last time I saw him he seemed sane, except for a feeling of irritation against me and against Carrie, who, it seems, is my half-sister. But he attacked me suddenly, knocked me on the head, and tried to drown me. There, now you know as much as I do. Can you wonder now that I was obliged to cut myself off from my friends, with such a burden as that on my mind?"
"Poor lad!" he said at last. "Poor lad! I think you might have found some better way out of it than holding your tongue and shutting yourself up from all your friends; but, on the other hand, it was a jolly difficult position. Jolly difficult! And so you never even told Max?"