d I need her--Mother
of God, I need her more than I ever needed anything in my life! You have
each other, but I have only myself, and it is not good company. Besides,
the child is mine, a Barbille of Barbilles, une legitime--a rightful
child of marriage. But if it was a love-child only it would still be
mine, being my daughter's child. Look you, it is no such thing. It is of
those who can claim inheritance back to Louis XI. She will be to me the
gift of God in return for the robbery of death."

He leaned over the cradle, and his look was like that of one who had
found a treasure in the earth.

Now she struck hard. Yet very subtly too did she attack him. "You--you
are thinking of yourself, m'sieu', only of yourself. Aren't you going to
think of the child at all? It isn't yourself that counts so much. You've
had your day, or the part of it that matters most. But her time is
not yet even begun. It's all--all--before her. You say you'll take her
away--well, to what? To what will you take her? What have you got to
give her? What--"

"I have the three hundred and twenty acres out there"--he pointed
westward--"and I will make a home and begin again with her."

"Three hundred and twenty acres--'out there'!" she exclaimed in scorn.
"Any one can have a farm here for the askin'. What is that? Is it a
home? What have you got to start a home with? Do you deny you are no
better than a tramp? Have you got a hundred dollars in the world? Have
you got a roof over your head? Have you got a trade? You'll take her
where--to what? Even if you had a home, what then? You would have to get
someone to look after her--some old crone, a wench maybe, who'd be as
fit to bring up a child as I would be to--" she paused and looked round
in helpless quest for a simile, when, in despair, she caught sight of
Jean Jacques' watch-chain--"as I would be to make a watch!" she added.

Instinctively Jean Jacques drew out the ancient timepiece he had worn
on the Grand Tour; which had gone down with the Antoine and come up with
himself. It gave him courage to make the fight for his own.

"The good God would see that--" he began.

"The good God doesn't interfere in bringing up babies," she retorted.
"That's the work for the fathers and mothers, or godfathers and
godmothers."

"You are neither," exclaimed Jean Jacques. "You have no rights at all."

"I have no rights--eh? I have no rights! Look at the child. Look at the
way she's clothed. Look at the cradl