“There is my child. I have set my life to the one task, to keep him to myself, and yet to win for him the heritage of the dukedom of Bercy. You shall yet pay to him the price of your wrong-doing.”
She drew back slightly so that he could see the child lying with its rosy face half buried in its pillow, the little hand lying like a flower upon the coverlet.
Once more with a passionate exclamation he moved nearer to the child.
“No farther!” she said, stepping before him.
When she saw the wild impulse in his face to thrust her aside, she added: “It is only the shameless coward that strikes the dead. You had a wife—Guida d’Avranche, but Guida d’Avranche is dead. There only lives the mother of this child, Guida Landresse de Landresse.”
She looked at him with scorn, almost with hatred. Had he touched her—but she would rather pity than loathe!
Her words roused all the devilry in him. The face of the child had sent him mad.
“By Heaven, I will have the child—I will have the child!” he broke out harshly. “You shall not treat me like a dog. You know well I would have kept you as my wife, but your narrow pride, your unjust anger threw me over. You have wronged me. I tell you you have wronged me, for you held the secret of the child from me all these years.”
“The whole world knew!” she exclaimed indignantly. “I will break your pride,” he said, incensed and unable to command himself. “Mark you, I will break your pride. And I will have my child too!”
“Establish to the world your right to him,” she answered keenly. “You have the right to acknowledge him, but the possession shall be mine.”