“I offer you a place in this house as my son.  I offer to deal with you as a father—­accepting that belief and every responsibility, and every duty, and every sacrifice that such a belief entails,”

For a long time the young fellow stood there without stirring, pallid, his dark, expressionless eyes, fixed on space.  And after a while he spoke.

“Colonel Arran, I had rather than all the happiness on earth, that you had left me the memory of my mother.  You have chosen not to do so.  And now, do you think I am likely to exchange what she and I really are, for anything more respectable that you believe you can offer?

“How, under God, you could have punished her as you did—­how you could have reconciled your conscience to the invocation of a brutal law which rehabilitated you at the expense of the woman who had been your wife—­how you could have done this in the name of duty and of conscience, I can not comprehend.

“I do not believe that one drop of your blood runs in my veins.”

He bent forward, laying his hands flat on the cloth, then gripping it fiercely in clenched fists: 

“All I want of you is what was my mother’s.  I bear the name she gave me; it pleased her to bestow it; it is good enough for me to wear.  If it be hers only, or if it was also my father’s, I do not know; but that name, legitimate or otherwise, is not for exchange!  I will keep it, Colonel Arran.  I am what I am.”

He hesitated, rigid, clenching and unclenching his hands—­then drew a deep, agonised breath: 

“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.

“Bring me the despatch box which stands on:  my study table.”