"You--madame, you are only thinking of yourself in this. You are only
thinking what you want, what you and your man need. But it's not to be
looked at that way only, and--"
"Well, then it isn't to be looked at that way only," she interrupted. "As
you say, it isn't Nolan and me alone to be considered. There's--"
"There's me," he interrupted sharply. "The child is bone of my bone. It
is bone of all the Barbilles back to the time of Louis XI."--he had said
that long ago to Zoe first, and it was now becoming a fact in his mind.
"It is linked up in the chain of the history of the Barbilles. It is one
with the generations of noblesse and honour and virtue. It is--"
"It's one with Abel the son of Adam, if it comes to that, and so am I,"
Norah bitingly interjected, while her eyes flashed fire, and she rocked
the cradle more swiftly than was good for the child's sleep.
Jean Jacques flared up. "There were sons and daughters of the family of
Adam that had names, but there were plenty others you whistled to as you
would to a four-footer, and they'd come. The Barbilles had names--always
names of their own back to Adam. The child is a Barbille--Don't rock the
cradle so fast," he suddenly added with an irritable gesture, breaking
off from his argument. "Don't you know better than that when a child's
asleep? Do you want it to wake up and cry?"
She flushed to the roots of her hair, for he had said something for which
she had no reply.
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