human
It was one night a few weeks before he set out to join Turenne in the Palatinate. A great _fête_ was given by Louis to celebrate his birthday at St. Germain-en-Laye, his birthplace, and it was there we met again. Presently, when both of us were able to escape from the great crowd of courtiers, marshals, and ministers who surrounded the king, he told me that he was glad he had met me once more--that he wished to confide a secret to me if I would hear it, a charge if I would accept it. At first I hesitated, then--when I found it would not thrust against your father's honour --again the girl stroked her mother's hand--
gpt
I told him he might confide in me. Aurélie, he told me that, embittered by having lost me, he had married in private an English lady, daughter of a refugee, that he had learned to love her, and that death had parted them after a few years of marriage. Also, he told me, she left him a son, whom he had brought up in ignorance of the position that must be his, but that--should he return from the Palatinate--he meant to acknowledge him. He never did return, and his son has never been acknowledged.
human
Why, my mother? asked Aurélie, with an upward glance.
gpt
Why?
human
Nay, child, the marquise replied.
gpt
Think no evil of me. No base thoughts entered my mind. No remembrance that his son stood in the way of your half-brother's inheritance--he and your father being ostensibly De Vannes's heir. No! no! no! But in that hurried interval both he and I had made one fatal slip--had committed one hideous act of forgetfulness. He had forgotten to tell me--I to ask--where this son was, and in what name he was known.
human
Yet now you know! You have found out!
gpt
Yes, I have found out. That son is the man who sleeps beneath our roof to-night--Lieutenant St. Georges.
human
But how? How? How?
gpt
Again, listen. For years I sought to find him, made inquiries in every quarter I could think of, asked--quietly and cautiously--of all who might by chance possess any information. Then, at last, it came--from the quarter least to be imagined. From your half-brother.
human
Raoul?