"_What_ are they not? What word was on your tongue, Gilbert?"
He could not answer. He could only shake his head, and bring forth a cowardly, evasive word,--"Nothing."
"But there _is_ something! Oh, I knew it must come some time!" she cried, rather to herself than to him. "Listen to me, Gilbert! Has any one dared to say to your face that you are basely born?"
He felt, now, that no further evasion was possible; she had put into words the terrible question which he could not steel his own heart to ask. Perhaps it was better so,--better a sharp, intense pain than a dull perpetual ache. So he answered honestly now, but still kept his head turned away, as if there might be a kindness in avoiding her gaze.
"Not in so many words, mother," he said; "but there are ways, and ways of saying a thing; and the cruellest way is that which everybody understands, and I dare not. But I have long known what it meant. It is ten years, mother, since I have mentioned the word '_father_' in your hearing."
Mary Potter leaned forward, hid her face in her hands, and rocked to and fro, as if tortured with insupportable pain. She stifled her sobs, but the tears gushed forth between her fingers.
"O my boy,--my boy!" she moaned. "Ten years?--and you believed it, all that time!"
He was silent. She leaned forward and grasped his arm.
"Did you,--_do_ you believe it? Speak, Gilbert!"
When he did speak, his voice was singularly low and gentle. "Never mind, mother!" was all he could say. His head was still turned away from her, but she knew there were tears on his cheeks.
"Gilbert, it is a lie!" she exclaimed, with startling vehemence. "A lie,--A LIE! You are my lawful son, born in wedlock! There is no stain upon your name, of my giving, and I know there will be none of your own."
He turned towards her, his eyes shining and his lips parted in breathless joy and astonishment.
"Then, mother, give me my name! Now I ask you, for the first time, who was my father?"
She wrung her hands and moaned. The sight of her son's eager, expectant face, touched with a light which she had never before seen upon it, seemed to give her another and a different pang.
"Gilbert," she then said, "have I always been a faithful mother to you? Have I been true and honest in word and deed? Have I done my best to help you in all right ways,--to make you comfortable, to spare you trouble? Have I ever,--I'll not say acted, for nobody's judgment is perfect,--but tried to act otherwise than as I thought it might be for your good?"