Then all at once he perceived that what John Fiske was saying was, in a voice of anguish,
"The child is mine! I bore him!"
He shut the book. He could not evade the thing. And after all what was there to evade? He was right. The law had justified him in what he had done. And the courts knew less about the case than he did too,—that was another thing. He had not injured her reputation in any way. He had seen to that. The world would know her always as an injured wife. He was content that it should be so. It would know him as a hard-hearted unnatural monster. He knew that because a candid man had eased an over-wrought mind to-day by telling him so. Even Semple, his friend, his own familiar friend,—he winced now as one does when a bare nerve is touched,—had avoided him as they left the court-house. Only those who have few friends could know how that cut.
Well, let the world think what it chose of him. He knew he was right. He could have justified himself before them all, but it would have been at her expense. That he did not choose to do. He had heeded his brother's dying request and spared her. Victor, in shielding her with his latest breath, had made what reparation he could for the wrong he had done her. It was left to him to administer justice. And why should he not? he asked himself with a sudden sense of bereavement. She had taken from him his best beloved. He had done no more by her. And he knew and she knew why he had done it. That was enough. Pity? No. Had she had pity?
Richard De Jarnette had the eyes of his mother, but his mouth, as it tightened now, looked singularly like that of the man in the portrait above him.
A knock broke in upon his perturbed thoughts and Mammy Cely's dark face appeared.
"Marse Richard,—"
"Well?" He was impatient at the interruption.
"—I reckon, sir, you got to come up sta'rs to that chile. I can't do nothin' with him."
"What's the matter with him? Is he sick?"