“The boy is right,” he said, turning to Lady Hamilton. “Men talk of atonement; how imperfect must it ever be! This boy hates me; it may be long before he feels otherwise. But for myself, I do not hate him, and never hated him. I should have despised him, though, had he accepted the conditions I offered him.”
“Yet you offered them,” replied Gavin; “you offered me anything and everything if I would abandon my mother.”
Sir Gavin waved his hand calmly.
“That is past,” he said. “She saved my life at the risk of her own. I have offered her the only recompense possible. I will acknowledge her to be my wife. Of course, in doing that, I am condemning my own course for twenty years past. Well, men sometimes do that. It is not in me to fall down on my knees and ask the world to flagellate me. I make neither promises nor professions. I only offer to regard the imperfect marriage ceremony which united us as perfectly valid. We both acted in good faith. The time came when I would have been glad to have been free from the bond. I shall make no further effort. I cannot, in fact, after having received her in my house, and acknowledged her right to be here.”
It was not gracious, but, as Sir Gavin truly said, it was not in him to abase himself.
Lady Hamilton’s reply was made with the utmost dignity.
“I ask nothing but the recognition of my right and my son’s right. I do not desire to remain in this house an hour longer than is necessary to establish the fact in the eyes of the world that I am Lady Hamilton. Then I shall go with my son and depend entirely upon him and upon myself. He has never yet failed me either in respect or affection, and having secured his right, I have nothing more to ask.”
Never in all his life had Gavin felt prouder of his mother than at that moment. Even a gleam of admiration came into Sir Gavin Hamilton’s cold eyes. His reply was more conciliatory than anything he had yet said.
“I do not feel I have the right to exercise any compulsion over you, madam, but I would suggest that you remain in my house until I am sufficiently recovered to attend you to the royal levee. That will be the simplest as well as the most effective method of undoing the work of many years.”
Lady Hamilton bowed silently, and Gavin, with a formal inclination of the head to his father, offered his mother his arm, and they descended the stairs.