'She was nothing at all to Bérarde,' said Louis Roze sullenly, beginning to perceive that he had been interrogated with a purpose.
'A bastard!' he added. 'The law does not recognise bastards.'
'The law, like proverbs, is the distilled wisdom of mankind,' said Othmar. 'Like proverbs also, it occasionally may be caught tripping in its wisdom.'
The man eyed him uneasily.
'She was a bastard,' he said again. 'I did generously by her, because after all blood is blood. I sent her a handsome dowry; big enough to get her a good spouse amongst better men than she had any right to look for:—'
He felt angry and baffled, and would have been quarrelsome and have told his visitant to mind his own business, only that he saw the unbidden guest was a gentleman, and the order for the craft had made him patient and obsequious.
Othmar looked at him with some disgust, changed his tone, and addressed him with more severity.
'M. Louis Roze, it is no concern of mine you will say, but I am here to tell you one thing, and you must listen to me. Legally, maybe, your cousin Damaris had no claim on this estate, but you know that she was brought up from infancy as her grandfather's heiress, that she was always encouraged to believe the island would be her own, and that only because of her refusal to marry you was she omitted from her grandfather's will, to your benefit—perhaps from an old man's perverse tyranny and rage, perhaps a little also from your suggestion and your intrigues. Be that as it will, you are morally bound, unless you are a cur indeed, to share your inheritance with one who has every moral right, and right of usage, to the whole of it. The dower you boast of having sent was returned to you. Your cousin is poor, but not so poor as to take as your alms what is her right. She is with those who can protect her, and is out of the danger to which you allowed her to drift without stretching out a hand to save her. If you consent to divide in equity your inheritance with her, I will tell you who I am, and give you all proofs and explanations that you may reasonably require. If you refuse I shall bid you good-morning, and rest content with the satisfaction, not a rare one in this world, of having seen an unjust and dishonest man.'
Louis Roze stared at him, perplexed by his tone, purple with rage and astonishment, made a coward not by conscience but by fear of losing a lucrative order, and so bewildered at the sudden attack that, southerner though he was, he had no good lie ready. All he felt for the moment sensible of was that not a bronze bit of the money, not a rood of the soil, not a rotten bough off one of the trees, should go away from himself to that girl, who had so grossly outraged him in refusing his hand. In a boorish, dumb-animal fashion he had been in love with the handsome child, who had always laughed at him and flouted him, and had never even let him kiss her cheeks in cousinly manner. As she had made her bed so she might lie in it. Not a sou should she get out of him, that he swore; the will was a good will, attested and duly proved; no one could gainsay it, and the young woman falsely called Bérarde was without any possible claim whatever; there had been no legal adoption of her. So he declared, with many an oath to keep his courage up before this stranger, whose manner daunted him; and his wife overhearing that it was a question of the inheritance which was under discussion, thrust herself into the balcony and vociferated with shrill iteration and the fury of a woman menaced in her dearest possessions, that whilst she lived not a centime should ever go away from her lawful lord.
Othmar turned away before their clamour was half done.