She turned to look at him, nodding silently.
"Where is he?"
"In London. It was about him--I came down here. I--I--want to get
rid of him."
A look of horror crossed his face, as though in her faint yet
violent words he caught the echoes of an intolerable past. But he
controlled himself.
"Tell me more--I want to help you."
"You--you won't get any joy of him!" she said, still staring at him.
"He's not like other children--he's afflicted. It was a bad doctor--when
I was confined--up in the hills near Lucca. The child was injured.
There's nothing wrong with him--but his brain."
A flickering light in Buntingford's face sank.
"And you want to get rid of him?"
"He's so much trouble," she said peevishly. "I did the best I could for
him. Now I can't afford to look after him. I thought of everything I
could do--before--"
"Before you thought of coming to me?"
She assented. A long pause followed, during which Miss Alcott came in,
administered stimulant, and whispered to Buntingford to let her rest a
little. He sat there beside her motionless, for half an hour or more,
unconscious of the passage of time, his thoughts searching the past, and
then again grappling dully with the extraordinary, the incredible
statement that he possessed a son--a living but, apparently, an idiot
son.
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