ormer
spuriously calm; the latter making no attempt to conceal her agitation.
Hortensia leant forward, an eager spectator, watching the three actors
in this tragicomedy.

As for Rotherby, he stood with bent head and furrowed brow. It was for
him to speak, and yet he was utterly at a loss for words. He was not
moved at the news he had received, so much as dismayed. It dictated a
course that would interfere with all his plans, and therefore a course
unthinkable. So he remained puzzled how to act, how to deal with this
unexpected situation.

It was her ladyship who was the first to break the silence. She had been
considering Mr. Caryll through narrowing eyes, the corners of her mouth
drawn down. She had caught the name of Maligny when it was uttered, and
out of the knowledge which happened to be hers--though Mr. Caryll was
ignorant of this--it set her thinking.

"I do not believe that you are the son of Mademoiselle de Maligny," she
said at last. "I never heard that my lord had a son; I cannot believe
there was so much between them."

Mr. Caryll stared, startled out of his habitual calm. Rotherby turned to
her with an exclamation of surprise. "How?" he cried. "You knew, then?
My father was--"

She laughed mirthlessly. "Your father would have married her had he
dared," she informed them. "'Twas to beg his father's consent that
he braved his banishment and came to England. But his father was as
headstrong as himself; held just such views as he, himself, held later
where you were concerned. He would not hear of the match. I was to be
had for the asking. My father was a man who traded in his children, and
he had offered me, with a jointure that was a fortune, to the Earl of
Ostermore as a wife for his son."

Mr. Caryll was listening, all ears. Some light was being shed upon much
that had lain in darkness.

"And so," she proceeded, "your grandfather constrained your father to
forget the woman he had left in France, and to marry me. I know not
what sins I had committed that I should have been visited with such a
punishment. But so it befell. Your father resisted, dallying with the
matter for a whole year. Then there was a duel fought. A cousin of
Mademoiselle de Maligny's crossed to England, and forced a quarrel upon
your father. They met, and M. de Maligny was killed. Then a change set
in in my lord's bearing, and one day, a month or so later, he gave way
to his father's insistence, and we were wed. But I do not believ