wanted to be able to say, `_my son_'...
One always loves the tots in the Park--little white bundles with curly
heads; but to-day I envied the nursemaids. I wanted to be tired,
wheeling my bundle. I tried not to look at the people. I stared into
the shop windows instead; but they hurt too. You know my craze for
furniture? I've whiled away many hours mentally furnishing my home of
the future. I had decided the colour for each room, and the scheme of
decoration. When anything worried me in another house, I consoled
myself that it would be different in mine; when I admired a thing, I
made a mental note. Jean, I shall have _no_ home! A boarding-house, an
apartment, perhaps a solitary cottage in the wilds, never, never a real
warm home with some one to love, and to love me back... How should you
feel if it were you; if any one had put a blank wall before _your_
life?"

"As you do, dear--dazed and broken; worse, perhaps, for I should not
take it so calmly. I should storm and rage."

"Yes! You are _revoltee_. It doesn't help, Jean, or I would shriek
with the best. There is only one thing which rouses my wrath--I ought
to have known before. Aunt Mary thought it was kind to bring me up in
ignorance. When I asked questions about my relations she put me off
with generalities. I thought it was strange that so many of them had
been invalids... I never could understand why I had not seen father for
years before his death. When I was a child I took for granted that he
had been abroad; later, I scented a mystery and was afraid to ask. I
suffered tortures, Jean, puzzling over it at nights, trying to piece
together scattered bits of information. I had terrible thoughts--the
blackest thoughts. I had visions of him as a forger, shut up in a cell.
When the bell rang late at night I used to tremble, wondering if it
were he escaped from prison, coming to us for shelter... Then at the
end, as so often happens, it came out just by chance. Some people were
sitting behind a screen at a reception, and they spoke of me--just a few
words, and before I could move I had heard the great secret.
`Interesting-looking girl! It is to be hoped she won't go mad, too. So
many of that family--' It was like a flashlight over the past. I looked
back, and understood. All the bits fitted, and the mystery was solved.
I was not the daughter of a criminal--only of a maniac, who had been
shut up for five years before his death. That was m