while she gathered strength again. After
what seemed a long time, and in a rather stronger voice she said:

"Did you ever find out--what I had done?"

"I discovered that you had gone away with Rocca--into Italy. I followed
you by motor, and got news of you as having gone over the Splugen. My car
had a bad accident on the pass, and I was ten weeks in hospital at Chur.
After that I lost all trace."

"I heard of the accident," she said, her eyes all the while searching out
the changed details of a face which had once been familiar to her. "But
Rocca wasn't with me then. I had only old Zelie--you remember?"

"The old _bonne_--we had at Melun?"

She made a sign of assent.--"I never lived with Rocca--till after the
child was born."

"The child! What do you mean?"

The words were a cry. He hung over her, shaken and amazed.

"You never knew!"--There was a faint, ghastly note of triumph in her
voice. "I wouldn't tell you--after that night we quarrelled--I concealed
it. But he is your son--sure enough."

"My son!--and he is alive?" Buntingford bent closer, trying to see her
face.

She turned to look at him, nodding silently.

"Where is he?"

"In London. It was about him--I came down here. I--I--want to get
rid of him."

A look of horror crossed his face, as though in her faint yet
violent words he caught the echoes of an intolerable past. But he
controlled himself.

"Tell me more--I want to help you."

"You--you won't get any joy of him!" she said, still staring at him.
"He's not like other children--he's afflicted. It was a bad doctor--when
I was confined--up in the hills near Lucca. The child was injured.
There's nothing wrong with him--but his brain."

A flickering light in Buntingford's face sank.

"And you want to get rid of him?"

"He's so much trouble," she said peevishly. "I did the best I could for
him. Now I can't afford to look after him. I thought of everything I
could do--before--"

"Before you thought of coming to me?"

She assented. A long pause followed, during which Miss Alcott came in,
administered stimulant, and whispered to Buntingford to let her rest a
little. He sat there beside her motionless, for half an hour or more,
unconscious of the passage of time, his thoughts searching the past, and
then again grappling dully with the extraordinary, the incredible
statement that he possessed a son--a living but, apparently, an idiot
son. The light began to fail, and Miss Alcott slipped in