"What good? It alters nothing."
"As regards your son?"
Sir Denzil shrugged lightly.
"He has shown himself a fool, but he is hardly such a fool as that. If he comes to the title, and she claims on him, he must fight his own battle. As to the whelps----" Another shrug shelved them for future consideration.
Nevertheless, when Dr. Yool had driven away in the gig with the yellow wheels, Sir Denzil paced his room by the hour in deep thought, and none of it pleasant, if his face was anything to go by.
He travelled along every possible avenue, and found each a blind alley.
He could send the girl about her business, and the old woman too. But to what purpose? If they took one of the children with them, which would it be? Most likely Lady Susan's. But he would never be certain of it. That would be so obviously the thing to do that they would probably do the opposite. If they left both children, he would have to get some one else to attend to them, and no one in the world had the interest in their welfare that these two had.
If both children died, then Denzil might marry again, and have an heir about whom there was no possible doubt. That is, if this other alleged marriage of his was, as he suspected, only a sham one. He would have to look into that matter, after all.
If, by any mischance, the marriage, however intended, proved legal, then that hope was barred, and it would be better to have the children, or at all events one of them, live. Otherwise the succession would vest in the Solway Carrons, whom he detested. Better even Nance Lee's boy than a Solway Carron.
The conclusion of the matter was, that he could not better matters at the moment by lifting a finger. Not lightly nor readily did he bring his mind to this. He spent bitter days and nights brooding over it all, and at the end he found himself where he was at the beginning. Time might possibly develop, in one or other of the boys, characteristics which might tell their own tale. But that chance, he recognised, was a small one. Both boys took after their father, and were as like Denzil, when he was a baby, as they possibly could be.