My head aches--you must wait."
Arthur spoke in a strange, indistinct voice, with a confused and rambling manner.
James looked round in surprise.
"Is there anything the matter with you?" he asked anxiously, suddenly remembering that Arthur had come from a very hotbed of infection. "I hope you're not sickening for anything.
You look quite feverish."
"Nonsense!" Julia interrupted sharply. "It's only the usual theatricals, because he's ashamed to face us. Come here and sit down, Arthur."
Arthur slowly crossed the room and sat down on the bed.
"Yes?" he said wearily.
Mr. Burton coughed, cleared his throat, smoothed his already immaculate beard, and began the carefully prepared speech over again:
"I feel it to be my duty--my painful duty--to speak very seriously to you about your extraordinary behaviour in connecting yourself with--a-- law-breakers and incendiaries and--a--persons of disreputable character.
I believe you to have been, perhaps, more foolish than depraved--a----"
He paused.
"Yes?" Arthur said again.
"Now, I do not wish to be hard on you," James went on, softening a little in spite of himself before the weary hopelessness of Arthur's manner. "I am quite willing to believe that you have been led away by bad companions, and to take into account your youth and inexperience and the--a-- a--imprudent and--a--impulsive character which you have, I fear, inherited from your mother."
Arthur's eyes wandered slowly to his mother's portrait and back again, but he did not speak.
"But you will, I feel sure, understand," James continued, "that it is quite impossible for me to keep any longer in my house a person who has brought public disgrace upon a name so highly respected as ours."
"Yes?" Arthur repeated once more.
"Well?" said Julia sharply, closing her fan with a snap and laying it across her knee. "Are you going to have the goodness to say anything but 'Yes,' Arthur?"
"You will do as you think best, of course," he answered slowly, without moving. "It doesn't matter much either way."
"Doesn't--matter?" James repeated, aghast; and his wife rose with a laugh.
"Oh, it doesn't matter, doesn't it?
Well, James, I hope you understand now how much gratitude you may expect in that quarter.
I told you what would come of showing charity to Papist adventuresses and their----"
"Hush, hush!
Never mind that, my dear!"
"It's all nonsense, James; we've had more than enough of this sentimentality!
A love-child setting himself up as a member of the family--it's quite time he did know what his mother was!
Why should we be saddled with the child of a Popish priest's amourettes?
There, then-- look!"
She pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of her pocket and tossed it across the table to Arthur.
He opened it; the writing was in his mother's hand, and was dated four months before his birth.
It was a confession, addressed to her husband, and with two signatures.
Arthur's eyes travelled slowly down the page, past the unsteady letters in which her name was written, to the strong, familiar signature:
"Lorenzo Montanelli."
For a moment he stared at the writing; then, without a word, refolded the paper and laid it down.
James rose and took his wife by the arm.
"There, Julia, that will do.
Just go downstairs now; it's late, and I want to talk a little business with Arthur. It won't interest you."
She glanced up at her husband; then back at Arthur, who was silently staring at the floor.
"He seems half stupid," she whispered.
When she had gathered up her train and left the room, James carefully shut the door and went back to his chair beside the table.
Arthur sat as before, perfectly motionless and silent.
"Arthur," James began in a milder tone, now Julia was not there to hear, "I am very sorry that this has come out.
You might just as well not have known it.
However, all that's over; and I am pleased to see that you can behave with such self-control.
Julia is a--a little excited; ladies often--anyhow, I don't want to be too hard on you."
He stopped to see what effect the kindly words had produced; but Arthur was quite motionless.
"Of course, my dear boy," James went on after a moment, "this is a distressing story altogether, and the best thing we can do is to hold our tongues about it.
My father was generous enough not to divorce your mother when she confessed her fall to him; he only demanded that the man who had led her astray should leave the country at once; and, as you know, he went to China as a missionary.
For my part, I was very much against your having anything to do with him when he came back; but my father, just at the last, consented to let him teach you, on condition that he never attempted to see your mother.