And then, before anything decisive had been done with regard to the settlement—before Brosy and Dosy had taken up their quarters for good beneath the roof of their adopted parent—a change befell, and Galahad received an imploring note from Mrs. Kingdom soliciting his instant presence upon “an urgent matter.”
“She has thought better of it,” said Galahad to himself, as he obeyed the summons. “Her native good sense”—you will realize that the man must have been genuinely in love to believe in Laura’s native good sense—“has come to her aid!” And in his mind’s eye he beheld the long, narrow backs of the twins walking away into a dim perspective.
It was September. Dosy and Brosy were shooting the widow’s partridges, and Galahad found her alone. She was pleased and excited, with an air of one who with difficulty keeps the cork in a bottle of mystery; and when she clasped her hands round Galahad’s arm and told him what a true, true friend he was! he felt absurdly tender, as he begged her to confide her trouble to him.
“I have made such a dreadful discovery,” Laura gasped, dabbing her eyes with a filmy little square of cambric edged with the narrowest possible line of black, “about the—about the boys.”
Galahad strove to compose his features into an expression of decent regret.
“Mr. Ambrose and Mr. Theodosius Lasher.... I rather anticipated that you—that possibly there were discoveries to be made.” He turned his weary gray eyes upon Laura, and pulled at one wiry end of his little gingery mustache. “Have they done anything very bad?” he asked, and his tone was not uncheerful.
“Bad!” echoed Laura, with indignant scorn. “As though two young men gifted with natures like theirs”—she had left off calling them “boys,” Galahad noticed—“so lofty, so noble, so unselfish—and yes, I will say it, so pure!—could possibly be guilty of any bad or even doubtful action. But you do not know them, and you are prejudiced; you must admit you are prejudiced when you hear the—the truth.” The cork escaped, and the secret came with it in a gush. “It is this: I cannot be a mother to Dosy and Brosy; they, poor dears, cannot be my sons. I had not the least idea of their true feeling with regard to me, nor had they, until quite recently.” She swallowed a little sob and dabbed her eyes again. “Oh, Galahad, they are madly in love with me, both of them. What, what am I to do?”