“That is very deplorable, if it is really so,” said the poor man, with a real compassion for sorrows that he was inclined to consider much heavier than he had been called upon to endure. For what, he asked himself, were the worst pangs of toil, care and want compared to the grief that would be his portion should he, in any way, lose his own fond wife and dear children?—“Very, very lamentable, if it is indeed true! but let us hope it is not so; that your imagination exaggerates the circumstance. Let us trust that the quarrel is not irreconcilable; that the husband has still a wife, the father still a child.”
“No, I have no wife nor ever shall have one; for though Drusilla is neither dead nor divorced, she is hopelessly estranged from me. I have no wife, nor ever shall have one.”
“But you have a child. He at least is not estranged from you.”
“No, but he belongs to his mother who bore him in peril of her own life, and has nurtured him tenderly and loves him fondly, I know. He belongs to her.”
“But the law gives him to you. You can claim him when you will.”
“But I would cut off my right hand, I would lay down my life, before I would take him from his mother, or do anything else to give her pain.”
“But, man, he is your heir!”
“Yes, he is my heir, and only child. If he should live, of course he will inherit Killcrichtoun. If he should not, why the barony will go to some distant branch of the family, unearthed in the investigation set on foot by my lawyers, when I laid claim to the title and estates. And—why, bless my soul, old fellow, it may go to you! May it not?”
“Failing yourself and heirs of your body, it may,” replied the poor gentleman, gravely. And then he pushed back his chair and showed signs of impatience to be off.
The usher was allowed but half an hour to take his lunch, and even now he was due at his schoolroom and in danger of a reprimand from his principal.