“Aunt Georgie,” she said in an agitated voice, “I’m sorry; I thought you were alone; but--but I think you’d better come at once.” How could I have known, or guessed? I could not even then. Only I recognised the urgency of some tragic call, and stepped aside to let her pass. For one instant her wild haunted eyes were turned on mine. “O! God forgive me!” she whispered; but I think it was I who ought to have uttered that broken prayer. CHAPTER XX. ANTONIO GEOLETTI So she believed me to be her son and his! The deadlier mystery was none of her sharing. For that, at least, I could breathe one heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving. She was innocent of any but that one deceit, and that one, even, in the relief of my soul, I could have found trivial to insignificance. The memory of our interview held me sleepless and agitated through most of the bitter night. I had denounced bravely, and promised bravely, and now through what new development of the situation was I purposing to redeem my promise? My course, I felt, would have been an easier if a darker one, had she betrayed her guilty partnership in that secret. Her ignorance there was but a new rock in my path. All doors seemed to open but to shut in my face; all jack-o’-lantern lights to lead me on but to plunge me in confusion. What impulse, interest, frenzy had so driven that mad woman to betray her husband to me? None, perhaps; but some inexplicable craft calculating to mislead me. Yet had I not proved the genuineness of her strange confidence? No, it was impossible not to believe that for some hidden reason he had earned her revengeful hatred. But for what reason? And how was it to be associated with the paramount mystery? I had promised much, and I meant much--desperately, if cunning would not serve. Yet I doubt my performance might have fallen far short of my intention, had not circumstance, at this crisis, given into my hands the very witness I could most need. That mocking altar still stood to attest my confidence in my tutelary god; yet not of Luck, I think, was this fortuity, but rather of the relentless processes of Fate. There was even hardly a coincidence in it, when one came to examine. I fell asleep at last, and woke to that sense of wan chill light on the ceiling which is the reflected ghastliness of snow. I rose shivering, and looked out of my window. The wood was all a whirling rush of flakes ground to powder between the teeth of a ravenous wind. It tore and spat them so, that the trees on their north sides were all glued with white foam a foot deep; and here and there ominous drifts were already forming.