"Name of God, do you think I'll let you have her!" returned Jean Jacques
with asperity and decision. "You say you are alone, you and your M'sieu'
Nolan. Well, I am alone--all alone in the world, and 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.
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