"So be it."
"Ay," exclaimed Robert St. Amande, "she may swear to it fifty times an' she will. Doubtless fifty guineas would produce as many oaths. But such evidence establishes no claim, nor does it prove even then that my brother begot the brat. And this man here," pointing a lean and shaking finger at my husband, whose self-control was most marvellous, "is not that babe, I swear. The babe who was born at New Ross was drowned in the Liffey in the year 'twenty-seven."
"Then," asked Sir Philip Yorke, "if such was the case to your knowledge, why, in the winter of that year, go out of your way to have this man whom you deemed an impostor shipped to the colonies to be sold as a slave in the plantations there? For that you did so endeavour we have, you know, O'Rourke's sworn testimony; and his accomplice, as you thought Mr. Quin to be, is in this house to produce your acquittance to him for so doing."
And he fixed his severe eyes on the other as he spoke.
[CHAPTER XXXII]
NEMESIS
Certainly Robert St. Amande looked now like a villain unmasked! All eyes were fixed upon him as he rolled his own round upon the assembled company; there was one pair, however, he did not see; the eyes of Louise, Lady St. Amande, who from behind the great pipes of the organ, had never ceased to gaze upon him and that other craven villain since they entered; and that he stood before them most thoroughly exposed he must have known well. Yet was his bravado such that he still endeavoured to brazen it all out; he still attempted to assert his wicked cause. Alas! I cannot think, even now, but that he would have desisted and have withdrawn ere it was too late could he have foreseen the dreadful tragedy that his conduct was to produce.
After a few seconds he again found his tongue; once more he nerved himself to address all in that saloon, defiant still and reckless in the blackness of his heart.
"He was to have been shipped to the plantations," he said, "not because I deemed him the rightful Gerald St. Amande, but because I knew him, even granting him to be the boy born at New Ross, to be smirched in his birth; because I knew my brother was not his father. 'Twas for the honour of the family; of my family, of yours, my lord Marquis, that no such child should ever sit in the place of honour. And wherein did I sin? Your house, my lord, the house in which I hope some day to sit as Marquis of Amesbury, has ere now refused the right of peerage to those born in wedlock when 'twas well known that, in spite of such birth, they had not been lawfully begotten. And that I knew of him; I know it and proclaim now." As he spoke he glared even more fiercely than before, so that his looks were terrible to see. Then he continued, "You, Sir Philip Yorke, you have produced your proofs to-day and have deemed them overwhelming. Now is the time, now the hour, for me to produce mine. I do so. You challenge me to bring forth evidence of the child's paternity other than that of my late brother. Behold it, then. Here sits the man who is the father of that other sitting there. 'Tis he, Wolfe Considine, the discarded admirer of Louise Sheffield before her marriage, the accepted lover of Louise St. Amande after her marriage, the father of Gerald St. Amande, the man who has been wrongfully installed as Lord St. Amande in the Irish peerage."
"God!" exclaimed my husband. "This can be borne no longer." And, as he spoke, he endeavoured to tear his sword from its sheath. Yet, between us, the Marquis and I did manage to appease him for the time, while the former whispered in his ear, "Tush, tush, be calm! Remember your mother hears all. Ere long we will bring her forth to confute them. Peace, I say."