her, even if fate played them
some ghastly trick and there was not time. Another girl's consciousness
of herself might have saved her, but she had no consciousness but his.
If--if a son is born he should be what his father would have been after
my death."

"The Head of the House," the Duchess said.

"It is a curious thing," he deliberated, "that now there remains no
possible head but what is left of myself--it ceases to seem the mere
pompous phrase one laughed at--the Head of the House of Coombe. Here I,
of all men, sit before you glaring into the empty future and demanding
one. There ought to have been more males in the family. Only four were
killed--and we are done for."

"If you had seen them married before he 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