ld lay, she drew the curtain softly, and
pointing, she said:

"There is my child. I have set my life to the one task, to keep him to
myself, and yet to win for him the heritage of the dukedom of Bercy. You
shall yet pay to him the price of your wrong-doing."

She drew back slightly so that he could see the child lying with its
rosy face half buried in its pillow, the little hand lying like a flower
upon the coverlet.

Once more with a passionate exclamation he moved nearer to the child.

"No farther!" she said, stepping before him.

When she saw the wild impulse in his face to thrust her aside, she
added: "It is only the shameless coward that strikes the dead. You had
a wife--Guida d'Avranche, but Guida d'Avranche is dead. There only lives
the mother of this child, Guida Landresse de Landresse."

She looked at him with scorn, almost with hatred. Had he touched
her--but she would rather pity than loathe!

Her words roused all the devilry in him. The face of the child had sent
him mad.

"By Heaven, I will have the child--I will have the child!" he broke out
harshly. "You shall not treat me like a dog. You know well I would have
kept you as my wife, but your narrow pride, your unjust anger threw me
over. You have wronged me. I tell you you have wronged me, for you held
the secret of the child from me all these years."

"The whole world knew!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I will break your
pride," he said, incensed and unable to command himself. "Mark you, I
will break your pride. And I will have my child too!"

"Establish to the world your right to him," she answered keenly. "You
have the right to acknowledge him, but the possession shall be mine."

He was the picture of impotent anger and despair. It was the irony of
penalty that the one person in the world who could really sting him was
this unacknowledged, almost unknown woman. She was the only human being
that had power to shatter his egotism and resolve him into the common
elements of a base manhood. Of little avail his eloquence now! He had
cajoled a sovereign dukedom out of an aged and fatuous prince; he had
cajoled a wife, who yet was no wife, from among the highest of a royal
court; he had cajoled success from Fate by a valour informed with vanity
and ambition; years ago, with eloquent arts he had cajoled a young girl
into a secret marriage--but he could no longer cajole the woman who was
his one true wife. She knew him through and through.

He was so