"Then he has no right to the name he bears."
"I know that. Whose fault is it, Basil Beaumont--yours or mine? Why didn't you make an honest woman of me?"
"Because I did not choose to," he replied, coolly; "by the way, has our son been confirmed?"
"No."
"Oh," he said, sneering, "I'm sorry he's not got some religious flavour about him. I wonder, Patience, when you called him Blake, you did not pass him off as Fanny's son."
She arose from her seat in a fury.
"Do you think I was going to place my sin on Fanny's shoulders?"
"I don't see why not--Fanny and yourself both came up to London at the same time--the child was born six months after you arrived there--why not call it Fanny's child?"
"There was no reason."
"Not then; but there is now, and a very excellent reason--ten thousand a year."