Then he burst into tears.

'You alarmed him rather too much. He is so very young,' she said to his father, when the child, forgiven and consoled, had trotted off to his nurse, who came for him.

'He shall obey you, and find his law in your voice, or I will alarm him more,' he said, with some harshness. 'If I thought he would ever give you a moment's sorrow I should hate him!'

It was not the first time that Sabran had seen his own more evil qualities look at him from the beautiful little face of his elder son, and at each of those times a sort of remorse came upon him. 'I was unworthy to beget her children,' he thought, with the self-reproach that seldom left him, even amidst the deep tranquility of his satisfied passions, and his perfect peace of life. Who could tell what trials, what pains, what shame even, might not fall on her in the years to come, with the errors that her offspring would have in them from his blood?

'It is foolish,' she murmured, 'he is but a baby; yet it hurts one to see the human sin, the human wrath, look out from the infant eyes. It hurts one to remember, to realise, that one's own angel, one's own little flower, has the human curse born with it. I express myself ill; do you know what I mean? No, you do not, dear; you are a man. He is your son, and because he will be handsome and brave you will be proud of him; but he is not a young angel, not a blossom from Eden to you.'

'You are my religion,' he answered, 'you shall be his. When he grows older he shall learn that to be born of such a mother as you is to enter the kingdom of heaven by inheritance. Shall he be unworthy that inheritance because he bears in him also the taint of my sorry passions, of my degraded humanity?'

'Dear! I too am only an erring creature. I am not perfect as you think me.'

'As I know you and as my children shall know you to be.'

'You love me too well,' she said again; 'but it is a beau défaut, and I would not have you lose it.'

'I shall never lose it whilst I have life,' he said, with truth and passion. 'I prize it more because most unworthy it.'