It was the day after the death of Sisily's mother, and Sisily had clung to him as if he were the only friend she had in the world.

She had spoken to him from the depth of an overburdened soul impelled to confide in another, telling him of her mother's sad life, unintentionally revealing something of the unhappiness of her own.

And she told him a strange thing about her mother's last hours.
On her death-bed the unhappy woman must have had her fears concerning the future of her daughter--belated uneasy premonitions arising after her dying confession to the man supposed to be her husband, perhaps causing her to doubt the wisdom of that revelation.

That seemed plain enough to Charles afterwards, though not apparent at the time Sisily had confided in him, for she had died without giving the girl the slightest indication of her life's secret, as if in some inscrutable hope that the tangle might be made straight.
What she did do was to make a feeble effort to save her daughter from the consequences of her own unhappy act, or at least to help her if those results arose.

She had whispered a name, the name of an old friend of her girlhood who would befriend her child if ever she needed help.