"Yes," he said, gazing into her eyes with the sorrow-laden expression of a man who sees naught but misery before him, "it was not chance, Yvonne, but the operation of a law as certain as death. The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. I had almost forgotten that your mother lived. After eighteen years she was dead to me. So far as you are concerned she might as well have died in giving you birth. Then her memory would have been a blessing rather than a curse."
"Hush, Dear! She may be dying even now. No, no, Darling, you shall not say it!" and her soft lips stifled the terrible wish that his anguish might have voiced.
For a little while neither could speak. Yvonne's head bent over her father's knees, and he knew that she was crying. With a supreme effort he strove to lessen the tension.
"Come, come, Sweetheart!" he said, stroking the mass of brown hair beneath the lace coif. "You and I must face this difficulty together, or goodness only knows what may be the outcome! Tell me now, if you are able, how you learned that Mrs. Carmac was your mother."
"Oh, Dad, she recognized me at once!" sobbed the girl. "Poor thing, the warmth of the blankets and a teaspoonful of brandy I forced between her lips brought her round slowly."
Even in her distress Yvonne had the tact to avoid the thorny bypath opened up by her father's involuntary cry. "She sighed deeply a few times," she went on hurriedly, "and I could tell by her color that she was about to revive. At last she opened her eyes, and looked at me in a dazed way.
"I was so overjoyed to find that she was not actually at the point of death that I felt no surprise. 'Yes, Dear,' I said, 'you are with friends, and that horrid wreck is a thing of the past.'
"But she continued to gaze at me as if I were a ghost. 'Yvonne Ingersoll!' she said again.
"Then it struck me as really remarkable that she should know my name. But I only asked her to drink a little more of the brandy, and rest until we reached Pont Aven.
"'Rest!' she said in quite a clear voice. 'Why should I rest when Heaven snatches me from a dreadful death and permits me to see my own daughter after eighteen years? Or is this some other world? Why am I here? Where have you come from?'