“And how does it concern me what you have learned?” said De Winter.

“Oh, it concerns you very closely, my uncle, I am sure, and you will soon be of my opinion,” added he, with a smile which sent a shudder through the veins of him he thus addressed.  “When I presented myself before you for the first time in London, it was to ask you what had become of my fortune; the second time it was to demand who had sullied my name; and this time I come before you to ask a question far more terrible than any other, to say to you as God said to the first murderer:  `Cain, what hast thou done to thy brother Abel?’ My lord, what have you done with your sister —­ your sister, who was my mother?”

De Winter shrank back from the fire of those scorching eyes.

“Your mother?” he said.

“Yes, my lord, my mother,” replied the young man, advancing into the room until he was face to face with Lord de Winter, and crossing his arms.  “I have asked the headsman of Bethune,” he said, his voice hoarse and his face livid with passion and grief.  “And the headsman of Bethune gave me a reply.”

De Winter fell back in a chair as though struck by a thunderbolt and in vain attempted a reply.

“Yes,” continued the young man; “all is now explained; with this key I open the abyss.  My mother inherited an estate from her husband, you have assassinated her; my name would have secured me the paternal estate, you have deprived me of it; you have despoiled me of my fortune.  I am no longer astonished that you knew me not.  I am not surprised that you refused to recognize me.  When a man is a robber it is hard to call him nephew whom he has impoverished; when one is a murderer, to recognize the man whom one has made an orphan.”

These words produced a contrary effect to that which Mordaunt had anticipated.  De Winter remembered the monster that Milady had been; he rose, dignified and calm, restraining by the severity of his look the wild glance of the young man.

“You desire to fathom this horrible secret?” said De Winter; “well, then, so be it.  Know, then, what manner of woman it was for whom to-day you call me to account.  That woman had, in all probability, poisoned my brother, and in order to inherit from me she was about to assassinate me in my turn.  I have proof of it.  What say you to that?”

“I say that she was my mother.”

“She caused the unfortunate Duke of Buckingham to be stabbed by a man who was, ere that, honest, good and pure.  What say you to that crime, of which I have the proof?”

“She was my mother.”

“On our return to France she had a young woman who was attached to one of her opponents poisoned in the convent of the Augustines at Bethune.  Will this crime persuade you of the justice of her punishment —­ for of all this I have the proofs?”

“She was my mother!” cried the young man, who uttered these three successive exclamations with constantly increasing force.