Jason Chadsey rose. For a moment he had murder in his heart. The man's evident prosperity and effrontery stung him so. The past came rushing over him.
"Do you know how I found her?" he began hoarsely. "I had resolved to come out here. I was getting tired of seafaring. I went to Munro to say good-by to a few old friends. I expected to find her a happy wife and mother, with little ones about her. Instead it was a virtually deserted wife, who had heard nothing of her husband in a long while, who had used up all her little store and was in debt besides, who was suffering from cold, want, heartbreak, and dying, knowing no refuge for her child except the poor farm or to be bound out to some neighbor."
"No, she would not have been," was the almost fierce interruption.
"The dying woman did not know that. She had some comfort in her last moments," and his voice softened curiously with remembered pathos. "She gave me the child. I have been father and mother to her. You cannot have her."
"I believe the law gives the parent the right to the child until she is of age. You had no consent of mine. You could not legally adopt her, at least, it would not hold in law."
Jason Chadsey turned pale under the tan of years. Why, he had not even thought of any legal protection for his claim. It rested only on love and care.
"You see," continued the confident voice, "that my right has been in no way jeopardized. I am Laverne Westbury's father, amply able to care for her in an attractive and refined manner, place her in the best society, to give her whatever education and accomplishment she needs, the protection of a mother, the standing of a father, travel—we are to go to England shortly—and it would be worse than folly to stand in her way."
"She will not go," Jason Chadsey said sturdily.
"She will if the law directs."
"She will not when she knows the struggle of the last year of her mother's life. Why, you robbed her mother, the poor, old, helpless woman, of the little she had. You persuaded her to take up money on the house—it was not worth much, but it was a home to shelter them."