“Possibly.”

“And what will she do with it?”

“Do with it?”

The lawyer was running his fingers through his long beard and trying to look perplexed.

“Mr. Curphy, I’ll ask you not to pretend to be unable to understand me.  If and when this lady gets possession of Mary O’Neill’s child, what is she going to do with it?”

“Very well,” said the advocate, seeing I meant business, “since my client permits me to speak, I’ll tell you plainly.  Whatever the child’s actual parentage . . . perhaps you know best. . . .”

“Go on, sir.”

“Whatever the child’s parentage, it was born in wedlock.  Even the recent divorce proceedings have not disturbed that.  Therefore we hold that the child has a right to the inheritance which in due time should come to Mary O’Neill’s offspring by the terms of the settlement upon her husband.”

It was just as I expected, and every drop of my blood boiled at the thought of my darling’s child in the hands of that frozen-hearted woman.

“So that is the law, is it?”

“That is the law in Ellan.”

“In the event of Mary O’Neill’s death, and her father’s death, her child and all its interests will come into the hands of. . . .”

“Of her father’s heir and representative.”

“Meaning, again, this lady?”

“Probably.”

The woman at the back of the chair began to look restless.

“I don’t know, sir,” she said, “if your repeated references to me are intended to reflect upon my character, or my ability to bring up the child well and look after its interests properly.”

“They are, madam—­they most certainly and assuredly are,” I answered.

“Daniel!” she cried.

“Be quiet, gel,” said Daniel O’Neill.  “Let the man speak.  We’ll see what he has come for presently.  Go on, sir.”

I took him at his word, and was proceeding to say that as I understood things it was intended to appeal to the courts in order to recover (nominally for the child) succession to the money which had been settled on Mary O’Neill’s husband at the time of their marriage, when the old man cried, struggling again to his feet: 

“There you are!  The money!  It’s the money the man’s after!  He took my daughter, and now he’s for taking my fortune—­what’s left of it, anyway.  He shan’t, though!  No, by God he shan’t! . . .  Go back to your woman, sir.  Do you hear me?—­your woman, and tell her that neither you nor she shall touch one farthing of my fortune.  I’m seeing to that now.  It’s what we’re here for to-night—­before that damnable operation to-morrow, for nobody knows what will come of it.  She has defied me and ruined me, and made me the byword of the island, God’s curse on her. . . .”

“Daniel!  Daniel!” cried the MacLeod woman, trying to pacify the infuriated madman and to draw him back to his seat.

I would have given all I had in the world if Daniel O’Neill could have been a strong man at that moment, instead of a poor wisp of a thing with one foot in the grave.  But I controlled myself as well as I could and said: