"I suppose you have meant to be just to me, I wish you might have dealt more mercifully with my mother. As for what you have done to me—well—if she was illegally my mother, I had rather be her illegitimate son than the son of any woman who ever lived within the law. Now may I have her letters?"
"Is that your decision, Berkley?"
"It is. I want only her letters from you—and any little keepsakes—relics—if there be any——"
"I offer to recognise you as my son."
"I decline—believing that you mean to be just—and perhaps kind—God knows what you do mean by disinterring the dead for a son to look back upon——"
"Could I have offered you what I offer, otherwise?"
"Man! Man! You have nothing to offer me! Your silence was the only kindness you could have done me! You have killed something in me. I don't know what, yet—but I think it was the best part of me."
"Berkley, do you suppose that I have entered upon this matter lightly?"
Berkley laughed, showing his teeth. "No. It was your damned conscience; and I suppose you couldn't strangle it. I am sorry you couldn't. Sometimes a strangled conscience makes men kinder."
Colonel Arran rang. A dark flush had overspread his forehead; he turned to the butler.