Marrion felt vaguely relieved. Unless Andrew Fraser turned up--and he, she knew, if he saw Marmaduke's child, would move heaven and earth to establish his claim to the title--she was quit of Drummuir. But had she any right to be quit of it? The old arguments for and against came back; she began to worry over them once more, especially when the verdict of the Edinburgh specialist to whom she told her tale with passionate assurances that a child's life was always more valuable than a woman's, came succinctly and to the point.
"In this case, my dear lady, the question does not appear to me to enter. With care I see no reason why both should not survive."
It was something of a shock, for it materialised many doubts, many difficulties.
[XII]
The spring had passed to early summer when Marrion, with her little son in her arms, sat in a sheltered nook among the cliffs on the Aberdeenshire coast, looking northwards over the curved sea-line towards the promontory some fifteen miles away, on which she knew the old castle of Drummuir stood as it had stood for centuries. But she could not see it with her physical eyes, and even in her mental ones it bulked but little.
For the great protective possession of motherhood had overwhelmed her, and her very regret and remembrance of Marmaduke only made her hug her child closer--as his, and hers.
At first when she realised that life spread before both her and the little Marmaduke she had agonised over the thought that by her own act she had deprived him of his birthright; but by degrees she became more content as she persuaded herself that that fateful envelope could scarcely have remained in Marmaduke's despatch-box without his knowledge. Yet he had never mentioned it. If he had repented of the action which at the time he had said made him feel like a scoundrel he could have amended it. And he had not done so. Never, never had he breathed one word to show that he held her, whom he had so tardily learnt to love, as his wife.
And here in her chain of reasoning she always stopped; for she knew--how could she help knowing?--that if he had lived--if--if---- Always that if, and if life had to be lived, it must be set aside. And life had to be lived.
This brought her back to the child in her arms, and she dreamt happily enough of the future.
It was not as if the boy had no home. As long as Princess Pauloffski ruled over the pine woods, the quaint homely farmhouses, and the devoted peasants, little Marmaduke would have more than welcome; for every week brought ecstatic letters from that entrancing personality which had already made such a mark on Marrion's character. In a way she felt that she had never understood her own womanhood until she had met with the all-embracing femininity of the brave, wise, old mind which seemed to hold a grip of the whole world in its very isolation and solitude.