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I smiled. "You don't know how much you sounded like my adoptive mother just then, reminding me of my given name as if it were branded an my forehead so I couldn't see it unless I looked in the mirror."

"Well, she had some good qualities. Despite her poor family losing its inheritance, she had breeding. I would have made more of an effort to prevent the marriage otherwise. And what of it? Reminding you that you were given a cherished, well-respected old family name is not a fault. You were very fortunate my brother had so much charity in his heart."

"Oh, you think it was simply his charity, then?"

"Of course it was simply that," she said, straightening out her robe. She looked as if she were sitting on needles the way she shifted in the chair nervously. "I have to get upstairs and wipe off this cream. It's set long enough. Please, move to the point," she demanded.

"Well. I'm happy to tell you that it was far more than simple charity for my father to bring me here to live. As it turns out. I wasn't given the name De Beers as a benevolent gift. I wasn't given anything. I was a De Beers at birth," I concluded.

She simply stared at me. Her eyelids fluttered a bit, and then she pursed her lips and tightened her cheeks until they dipped like saucers. It was as if the air within were being drawn down her body,

"What is that remark supposed to mean?" she said in a hoarse whisper.

"It means that my father, your brother, was really my father and not just in name," I said.

She seemed to shrink before inflating again. Even under the cream. I could see the crimson tint coming into her cheeks,

Are you sitting there and saying that my brother impregnated one of his own patients?"

It was a great deal more than just that. Aunt Agnes. They were truly in love, and, in fact, she remained at the clinic longer than she had to. When she gave birth, he brought me home. My adoptive mother never knew the truth."

"What truth? Some scandal story a mentally ill person spread and that you have taken up as gospel?" She leaped to her feet. "If you should so much as whisper such a ridiculous tale in anyone's ear. why, I'll--"

"Aunt Agnes," I said calmly. "this wasn't a story told by a patient. This is a story Daddy told me."

"That's a lie, a bald-faced lie you are spreading yourself to... to... give yourself more standing in the community or maybe to justify your inheriting all this!" she screamed, "My brother never said such a thing to you, and you know it."

"No, he didn't say it." I replied.

She relaxed her shoulders and sat again. "Exactly."

"He wrote it," I said.

"What?"

"He put it in the form of a letter and a diary that he had left with Mr. Bassinger to give to me in the event of his death. which Mr. Bassinger did. I tracked down my real mother and discovered she lives in Palm Beach, and that was why I went there." I added. "She told me more about Daddy and her. and I told her as much as I could about my life. We've grown very close in a very short time."

She stared at me, as if she had been turned to stone. "Your father wrote a diary... Mr. Bassinger knows all about this?"

"He does now He never looked in the sealed envelope, but since people in Palm Beach all know and might even be spreading it over the civilized world like hot butter over bread by now, I thought it was prudent to tell him, and now, of course. I think you should know as well. Isn't it wonderful? I'm really related to you by blood, and to your family, your whole family, cousins, everyone!" I cried with deliberately exaggerated happiness.

Her mouth seemed to come unhinged in the comers. Her lip drooped.

"I don't..." She pressed her hand to her heart. "I think I'm getting sick." she said.

"Oh, would you like a glass of water, something stronger, perhaps?" I asked with such overthe-top concern I thought she would see through it for sure, but she was too involved in her own worry and shock.

"What? Oh, yes, a glass of water. Yes." she said, and sat back so hard it looked as if she had lost complete control of her body.

I went to the kitchen and poured some water into a glass. When I returned, she was still sitting and staring blankly at the wall.

"Here you go." I said.

She looked at me and then at the water.

"Thank you," she said, taking it and drinking. "How could Claude have done such a thing?"

"I think it was wonderful. actually. He was truly in love, and so was she."