How can I be sure? How can I be
sure of anything?"
He swore a full round oath at her. "Because you saw him dead."
"Yet I may have been mistaken. I thought I knew the agents of
yours who killed him. Yet you made me swear--as the price of my
brothers' lives--that I was mistaken. Perhaps I was more mistaken
than we thought. Perhaps my little Demetrius was not slain at
all. Perhaps this man's tale is true."
"Perhaps . . ." He broke off to stare at her, mistrustfully,
searchingly. "What do you mean?" he asked her sharply.
Again that wan smile crossed the hard, sharp-featured face that
once had been so lovely. "I mean that if the devil came out of
hell and called himself my son, I should acknowledge him to your
undoing."
Thus the pent-up hate and bitterness of years of brooding upon
her wrongs broke forth. Taken aback, he quailed before it. His
jaw dropped foolishly, and he stared at her with wide, unblinking
eyes.
"The people will believe me, you say--they will believe that a
mother should know her own son. Then are your hours of usurpation
numbered."
If for a moment it appalled him, yet in the end, forewarned, he
was forearmed. It was foolish of her to let him look upon the
weapon with which she could destroy him.
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