She
shuddered as she had done in reading the letter. But they were related
only in name, in some distant, irreconcilable way--in a way which did not
warrant the sudden scarlet flush that flooded her face. Presently she
recovered herself. She--what did she suffer, compared with her who wrote
this revelation of a lifetime of pain, of bitter and torturing knowledge!
She looked up at the picture on the wall, at the still, proud,
emotionless face, the conventional, uninspired personality, behind which
no one had seen, which had agonised alone till the last. With what tender
yet pitiless hand had she laid bare the lives of her husband and her son!
How had the neglected mother told the bitter truth of him to whom she had
given birth! "So brilliant and able, and unscrupulous, like yourself;
but, oh, sure of winning a great place in the world . . . so calculating
and determined and ambitious. . . . That laboratory which I have hated
so. It has always seemed to me the place where some native evil and
cruelty in your blood worked out its will.
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