"And I want to speak to you about the squire," she retorted, quickly. "What were you doing following him upstairs?"
"Don't distress yourself, my good soul," said the artist, in a coolly aggravating manner. "I'll tell you that later on; meantime, we will talk of Chelsea."
"Pardon me--yes. Do you remember how we lived there, you and I, and the visions we used to indulge in? I haven't forgotten it, I assure you, and then Fanny Blake--poor Fanny! she is dead now. I see you gave the boy her surname."
"And what if I did?" she flashed out fiercely, with a deep frown on her face. "Could I give him yours--the father who had deserted him? Could I give him mine--the mother to whom his birth was a disgrace?"
"So I do--I love him more than my life; but his birth was a disgrace, and I wish to keep the knowledge from him, please God."
"Was the boy you call Reginald Blake ever christened?"
"Because I could not tell the truth about his birth, and I refused to tell a lie. He was neither christened, nor was his birth registered."
"Then he has no right to the name he bears."
"I know that. Whose fault is it, Basil Beaumont--yours or mine? Why didn't you make an honest woman of me?"
"Because I did not choose to," he replied, coolly; "by the way, has our son been confirmed?"
"Oh," he said, sneering, "I'm sorry he's not got some religious flavour about him. I wonder, Patience, when you called him Blake, you did not pass him off as Fanny's son."
"Do you think I was going to place my sin on Fanny's shoulders?"
"I don't see why not--Fanny and yourself both came up to London at the same time--the child was born six months after you arrived there--why not call it Fanny's child?"
"Not then; but there is now, and a very excellent reason--ten thousand a year."
"Simply this, that Reginald Blake, from this time forward, is the son of Fanny Blake and Randal Garsworth."
Patience looked at him in surprise, and involuntarily drew back a step, thinking him mad. Beaumont saw this, and laughed mockingly.
"Don't be afraid--there's method in my madness."
"There's some villainy in it," she said, with a hard smile, sitting down near him; "tell me what you mean, Basil Beaumont, if you intend touching a hair of my son's head I'll punish you."