Chapter 18 - Page 2

went away--" she began.

He rose to his feet as if involuntarily. He looked as she had never seen
him look before.

"Allow me to make a fantastic confession to you," he said. "It will open
doors. If all were as the law foolishly demands it should be--if she
were safe in the ordinary way--absurdly incredible or not as the
statement may seem--I should now be at her feet."

"At her feet!" she said slowly, because she felt herself facing actual
revelation.

"Her child would be to me the child of the son who ought to have been
born to me a life time ago. God, how I have wanted him! Robin would seem
to be what another Madonna-like young creature might have been if she
had been my wife. She would not know that she was a little saint on an
altar. She would be the shrine of the past and the future. In my
inexpressive way I should be worshipping before her. That her possible
son would rescue the House of Coombe from extinction would have meant
much, but it would be a mere detail. Now you understand."

Yes. She understood. Things she had never comprehended and had not
expected to comprehend explained themselves with comparative clearness.
He proceeded with a certain hard distinctness.

"The thing which grips me most strongly is that this one--who is one of
those who have work before them--shall not be handicapped. He shall not
begin life manacled and shamed by illegitimacy. He shall begin it with
the background of all his father meant to give him. The law of England
will not believe in his claims unless they can be proven. She can prove
nothing. I can prove nothing for her. If she had been a little female
costermonger she would have demanded her 'marriage lines' and clung to
them fiercely. She would have known that to be able to flaunt them in
the face of argument was indispensable."

"She probably did not know that there existed such documents," the
Duchess said. "Neither of the pair knew anything for the time but that
they were wild with love and were to be torn apart."

"Therefore," he said with distinctness even clearer and harder, "she
must possess indisputable documentary evidence of marriage before the
child is born--as soon as possible."

"Marriage!" she hesitated aghast. "But _who_ will--?"

"I," he answered with absolute rigidity. "It will be difficult. It must
be secret. But if it can be done--when his time comes the child can look
his new world in the face. He will be the Head of the House of Coombe
when it most needs a strong fellow who has no cause to fear anything and
who holds money and power in his hands."

"You