“You must learn the truth from him.”
“Oh, what can you mean—what can you mean?” she exclaimed. Dropping upon her knees, and running an arm round the child, she opened the parchment and read.
“What—what right has he to this?” she cried in a voice of dismay. “A year ago you dispossessed his father from the duchy. Ah, I do not understand it! You—only you are the Duc de Bercy.”
Her eyes were shining with a happy excitement and tenderness. No such look had been in them for many a day. Something that had long slept was waking in her, something long voiceless was speaking. This man brought back to her heart a glow she had never thought to feel again, the glow of the wonder of life and of a girlish faith.
“I am only Detricand of Vaufontaine,” he answered. “What, did you—could you think that I would dispossess your child? His father was the adopted son of the Duc de Bercy. Nothing could wipe that out, neither law nor nations. You are always Princess Guida, and your child is always Prince Guilbert d’Avranche—and more than that.”
His voice became lower, his war-beaten face lighted with that fire and force which had made him during years past a figure in the war records of Europe.
“I unseated Philip d’Avranche,” he continued, “because he acquired the duchy through—a misapprehension; because the claims of the House of Vaufontaine were greater. We belonged; he was an alien. He had a right to his adoption, he had no right to his duchy—no real right in the equity of nations. But all the time I never forgot that the wife of Philip d’Avranche and her child had rights infinitely beyond his own. All that he achieved was theirs by every principle of justice. My plain duty was to win for your child that succession belonging to him by all moral right. When Philip d’Avranche was killed, I set to work to do for your child what had been done by another for Philip d’Avranche. I have made him my heir. When he is of age I shall abdicate from the duchy in his favour. This deed, countersigned by the Powers that dispossessed his father, secures to him the duchy when he is old enough to govern.”
Guida had listened like one in a dream. A hundred feelings possessed her, and one more than all. She suddenly saw all Detricand’s goodness to her stretch out in a long line of devoted friendship, from this day to that far-off hour seven years before, when he had made a vow to her—kept how nobly! Devoted friendship—was it devoted friendship alone, even with herself? In a tumult of emotions she answered him hurriedly. “No, no, no, no! I cannot accept it. This is not justice, this is a gift for which there is no example in the world’s history.”
“I thought it best,” he went on quietly, “to govern Bercy myself during these troubled years. So far its neutrality has been honoured, but who can tell what may come! As a Vaufontaine it is my duty to see that Bercy’s interests are duly protected amidst the troubles of Europe.”
Guida got to her feet now and stood looking dazedly at the parchment in her hand. The child, feeling himself neglected, ran out into the garden.