‘If you can!’
‘What else have I been doing this last nineteen years,’ asked Peebles, ‘but prescribing the one sure remedy ye winna tak’? My lord, your disease is pride.
Try the black draught of humility and the blue pill of atonement!’
‘What the devil are you talking about?’ asked his lordship, looking angrily at his servant, who returned his gaze quite unmoved.
‘Ye know weel what I’m talkin’ aboot,’ he returned, with no quickening of his usual deliberate drawl. ‘Acknowledge your child, Lord Kilpatrick, and thank God humbly on your knees for such a son to bless your declining years.’
‘By Heaven!’ cried his lordship, sitting up in his chair, ‘you—you—how dare you trifle with me?’ The gray shade deepened on his face, his trembling hands were pressed against his heart. ‘I have done my uttermost. I have provided for the boy. I have looked after his welfare—can a man do more?’
‘Ay, he can! Desmond Macartney is your flesh and blood. Acknowledge him before the world—it’s all the atonement ye can make to the poor lass that’s gone.’
‘She was not my wife!’
‘Ay was she,’ returned Peebles, ‘in the sight o’ God!’
His lordship struggled up in his seat with an oath.