Galt's inner being seemed to shrink and wither. Already the world's persecution of the innocent had begun, and the sensitive, poetic, imaginative child would grow up to a full realization of his social shame. Nurtured in gentleness and refinement, he was yet to have the scales which hid his humiliation from from his sight, and then he would see; he would understand; he would know who to blame. And he would blame, poignantly and justly. The time might come when this tender sprig of himself, grown strong, and yet galled by his burden, might face his father as the cowardly churl who had stamped the unbearable stigma upon him and her. This child might live to curse him and spit upon him. The world might forgive in the glow of his power and gold, but the one he yearned for now, as he had yearned for nothing before, would go over his infamous past as minutely as an ant over the bark of a rotten tree.
The child had put down the weapon of his honored ancestor, and now stood with his little hands on the knee of his father, another side of his personality uppermost.
“I don't care,” he said, in his charmingly premature way, “if Grover Weston doesn't like me, because you say you do. He's nothing but a mean, horrid boy, while you are—”
“I am what, Lionel?” Galt's voice was stayed by huskiness in his throat, and he put an unsteady arm round the little form, resisting the yearning to clasp him tightly.
“Oh, you are everything—everything in the world. Doctor Wynn says you are very, very rich, and that you love all little boys—that's why I jumped that day. I wouldn't be afraid to jump from a higher tree than that if you were there to catch me. Oh, I like to have people love me! I like it better than anything.”
“And yet you do want other things?” Galt said, tentatively.
“Oh yes.” The child, guided by the gentle pressure round him, slid between his father's knees, and, putting his arm confidingly about Galt's neck, he drew himself to a seat in the man's lap, and laughed. “Mamma says I want the whole earth. I want a bicycle; and a gun; and a pony; and roller-skates; and—”
“You certainly do want a few things!” Galt tried to jest. “But we can't have everything, you know, in this life.”
“Not unless we are rich; and we are very poor at our house; but when the expressman brings the money for the pictures we are very glad. Then we have a good dinner. Last time Granny got a dress, and I got several suits like this one. Mother says some day we may go away off to another country where I'll have children to play with. I think that would be nicer than having toys.”
“Yes, yes,” Galt responded, from the depths of a new and rasping remorse, as the boy reclined on his arm and stretched out with a delicious sigh.