"The honor of a true man—the justice of the law of England."
Mrs. Ritson dropped her head. "So much for your honor," she said. "But what of mine?"
"Mother, what do you mean?"
"That if you allow your younger brother to inherit, the world by that act will be told all—your father's sin, your mother's shame."
Mrs. Ritson raised her hands to her face, and turned aside. Paul stepped up to her and kissed her forehead reverently.
"You are right," he said. "Forgive me—I thought only of myself. The world that loves to tarnish a pure name would like to gloat over your sorrow. That it shall never! Man's law may have been outraged, but God's law is still inviolate. Whatever my birth, I am as much your son in the light of Heaven as Jacob was the son of Isaac, or David of Jesse. Come, let us go to him—he may yet live to acknowledge me."
It had been a terrible moment, but it was past. To live to manhood in ignorance of the dishonor of his birth, and then to learn the truth under the shadow of death—this had been a tragic experience. The love he had borne his father—the reverence he had learned at his mother's knee—to what bitter test had they been put! Had all the past been but as the marble image of a happy life! Was all the future shattered before him! Pshaw! he was the unconscious slave of a superstition—a phantasm, a gingerbread superstition!
And a mightier touch awoke his sensibilities—the touch of nature. Before God at that moment he was his father's son. If the world, or the world's law, said otherwise, then they were of the devil, and deserving to be damned. What rite, what jabbering ceremony, what priestly ordinance, what legal mummery, stood between him and his claim to his father's name?
Paul took in love the hand of his mother. "Let us go in to him," he repeated, and together they walked across the room.
The outer door was flung open, and Greta entered, flushed and with wide-open eyes. At the same instant the inner door swung noiselessly back, and Hugh Ritson stood on the threshold. Greta was about to speak, but Hugh motioned her to silence. His face was pale, his hand trembled. "Too late," he said, huskily; "he is dead!"