Slowly, and in silence, Anne drew back to the low wall of the terrace close by.  She rested one hand on it to support herself.  Julius had said words of terrible import without a suspicion of what he had done.  Never until now had Anne Silvester known that the man who had betrayed her was the son of that other man whose discovery of the flaw in the marriage had ended in the betrayal of her mother before her.  She felt the shock of the revelation with a chill of superstitious dread.  Was the chain of a fatality wound invisibly round her?  Turn which way she might was she still going darkly on, in the track of her dead mother, to an appointed and hereditary doom?  Present things passed from her view as the awful doubt cast its shadow over her mind.  She lived again for a moment in the time when she was a child.  She saw the face of her mother once more, with the wan despair on it of the bygone days when the title of wife was denied her, and the social prospect was closed forever.

Julius approached, and roused her.

“Can I get you any thing?” he asked.  “You are looking very ill.  I hope I have said nothing to distress you?”

The question failed to attract her attention.  She put a question herself instead of answering it.

“Did you say you were quite ignorant of what your father was thinking of when he spoke to you about me?”

“Quite ignorant.”

“Is your brother likely to know more about it than you do?”

“Certainly not.”

She paused, absorbed once more in her own thoughts.  Startled, on the memorable day when they had first met, by Geoffrey’s family name, she had put the question to him whether there had not been some acquaintance between their parents in the past time.  Deceiving her in all else, he had not deceived in this.  He had spoken in good faith, when he had declared that he had never heard her father or her mother mentioned at home.

The curiosity of Julius was aroused.  He attempted to lead her on into saying more.

“You appear to know what my father was thinking of when he spoke to me,” he resumed.  “May I ask—­”

She interrupted him with a gesture of entreaty.

“Pray don’t ask!  It’s past and over—­it can have no interest for you—­it has nothing to do with my errand here.  I must return,” she went on, hurriedly, “to my object in trespassing on your kindness.  Have you heard me mentioned, Mr. Delamayn, by another member of your family besides your father?”

Julius had not anticipated that sh e would approach, of her own accord, the painful subject on which he had himself forborne to touch.  He was a little disappointed.  He had expected more delicacy of feeling from her than she had shown.

“Is it necessary,” he asked, coldly, “to enter on that?”

The blood rose again in Anne’s cheeks.