guessed, even though I always told you
to call me Rose, or anything you liked, except mother?"

She was waiting for him to answer; and he did answer, though it was as
if she had thrown him over a precipice, and he were hanging by some
branch which would let him crash down in an instant to the bottom of an
unknown abyss.

"No, I never guessed." Queer how quiet, how utterly expressionless his
voice was! He heard it in faraway surprise.

"I used to be afraid at first that Jack would guess, you were so unlike
either of us, so dark, so--so _Latin_. But he said you were a throw-back
to his Celtic ancestors. There were French and Irish ones hundreds of
years ago, you know. He never suspected. Everything happened just as I
hoped it would--just as I wanted it to. But I didn't realize how I
should feel about it if I were going to die. The minute I came to myself
after--the accident, it rushed over me. Not the very first thought. That
was about myself. I wanted to know if my looks were gone. When they had
to say yes, I was glad--thankful--I could die. I'd have poisoned or
starved myself rather than live on. But no need of that. I think I could
let myself slip away any minute now. I'm just--holding on. For something
told me--I have a feeling that Jack himself came, and has been here ever
since, knowing all I had done and willing me to tell the truth. I
struggled a little against it, for why shouldn't you go on being happy?
Nothing was _your_ fault. But it was borne in on me that I must give you
the chance to choose for yourself, and--_another_. That's why Jack has
come, perhaps. She is his daughter."

"There was a girl, our child. But--you can't understand unless I tell
you the story. I shall have strength. I feel I shall now--to get
through with it. Perhaps Jack will help. He was the one human being I
ever loved better than myself. That was real love! What I did was partly
for his sake, I'm honestly sure of that. He wouldn't have let me do it.
But it made him happy, not knowing----

"You've been told over and over how you were born in France, when Jack
and I had the Chateau de la Tour, on the Loire. That was true--the one
true thing. But you weren't born in the chateau. It wasn't for nothing
that you learned French almost as easily as you breathed--and Latin,
too. I suppose things like that are in people's blood. You are French.
If I had left you where you were, you would have grown up Maxime
Delatour. Delatour was your real