The Moon Rock | Page 8

At this admission his sister bounced from the sofa with a startled cry.
"So that was why there was no name plate on the coffin," she
exclaimed. "Oh, Robert, what a terrible thing--what a disgrace!"
"Spare me your protests until you have heard the explanation," Robert
coldly rejoined. "She"--he pointed a hand in the direction of the
churchyard--"was married before she met me. She kept the fact from
me. It was apparently a secret passage in her life. During our long
association together she gave no hint of it. She confessed the truth on
her deathbed. In justice to her memory let me say that she believed her
husband dead."
Robert Turold told this with unmoved face in barest outline--etched in
dry-point, as it were--leaving his hearers to fill in the picture of the
unhappy woman who had gone through life tormented by the twin
demons of conscience and fear, which had overtaken her and brought
her down before she could reach the safe shelter of the grave.
Mrs. Pendleton, whose robust mind had scant patience with the policy
of cowardice which dictates death-bed confessions, regretted that Alice,
having remained silent so long, had not kept silence altogether.

"You do not intend to make this scandal public, Robert?" she said
anxiously.
"I am compelled to do so," was the gloomy response.
"Is it necessary?" she pleaded. "Cannot the story be kept quiet--if not
for Alice's sake, at least for Sisily's? You must consider her above all
things. She is your daughter, your only child."
"I agree with Aunt," said Charles Turold. He rose from the
window-seat and approached the table. "Sisily must be your first
consideration," he said, looking at Robert Turold.
"This has nothing to do with you, Charles," interposed Austin hastily.
"I think it has," said his son. "You told me nothing about this, you
know."
"I was not aware of it myself," replied his father.
"Now that I know, I shall have nothing further to do with this,"
continued the young man. "I'm not going to help you wrong Sisily."
"I hardly expected such lofty moral sentiments from you," said Austin,
with a dark glance.
His son flushed as though there was a hidden sting behind the jibe. He
appeared to be about to say something more, but checked himself, and
went back to his seat by the window.
"Is there no way of keeping this matter quiet, Robert?" said his sister
imploringly.
"I see none," was the rejoinder. "It is a very painful disclosure, but I
think it is inevitable. Do you not agree with me, Austin?"
"Do not ask my opinion," his brother coldly replied. "It is for you to
decide."

Robert Turold paused irresolutely. "What do you say, Ravenshaw?" he
said, glancing round at the silent figure of the doctor. "I asked you to be
present this afternoon to have the benefit of your advice. I owe much to
you, so I beg you to speak freely."
"Since you have asked my advice," said Dr. Ravenshaw gravely, "I say
that I entirely agree with Mrs. Pendleton. Your first duty is to Sisily.
She should out-weigh all other considerations. If you make her
illegitimacy public you may live to be sorry for having done so."
Mrs. Pendleton cast a moist, grateful glance at the speaker, but Austin
Turold turned on him a look of cold hostility.
Robert Turold sat brooding for a few moments in silence. He had asked
advice, but his own mind was made up. The humane views of his sister
and Dr. Ravenshaw were powerless to affect his decision. The
monstrous growth of his single purpose had long since strangled such
transient plants as human affection and feeling in his heart and mind.
"The facts must be made public," he said inexorably. "The honour of a
noble family is in my hands, and I must do my duty. It would be an
insult to my Sovereign and my peers, and a grievous wrong to our
family, if I concealed any portion of the truth. I shall make adequate
provision for Sisily. You will not refuse to take charge of her,
Constance, because of this disclosure?"
"You ought to know me better than that, Robert. She'll need somebody
to take care of her, poor child! But who is to tell her the truth? For I
suppose she must be told?"
"I want you to tell her," said Robert Turold. "Choose your time. There
is no immediate hurry, but she must be in no false hopes about the
future. She had better be told before the Investigations Committee
meets."
"Bother the Investigations Committee!" exclaimed Mrs. Pendleton.
"Really, Robert--"

Mrs. Pendleton broke off abruptly, in something like dismay. She had a
fleeting impression of a pair of eyes encountering her own through a
crack in the doorway, and