His brain soon cleared. All that he had ever thought upon the matter now crystallised itself into the very truth of the affair. Philip had married Guida secretly; but his new future had opened up to him all at once, and he had married again--a crime, but a crime which in high places sometimes goes unpunished. How monstrous it was that such vile wickedness should be delivered against this woman before him, in whom beauty, goodness, power were commingled! She was the real Princess Philip d'Avranche, and this child of hers--now he understood why she allowed Guilbert to speak no patois. They scarcely knew how long they stood silent, she with her hand stroking the child's golden hair, he white and dazed, looking, looking at her and the child, as the thing resolved itself to him. At last, in a voice which neither he nor she could quite recognise as his own, he said: "Of course you live now only for Guilbert." How she thanked him in her heart for the things he had left unsaid, those things which clear-eyed and great-minded folk, high or humble, always understand. There was no selfish lamenting, no reproaches, none of the futile banalities of the lover who fails to see that it is no crime for a woman not to love him. The thing he had said was the thing she most cared to hear. "Only for that, Ranulph," she answered. "When will you claim the child's rights?" She shook her head sadly. "I do not know," she answered with hesitation. "I will tell you all about it." Then she told him of the lost register of St. Michael's, and about the Reverend Lorenzo Dow, but she said nothing as to why she had kept silence. She felt that, man though he was, he might divine something of the truth. In any case he knew that Philip had deserted her. After a moment he said: "I'll find Mr. Dow if he is alive, and the register too. Then the boy shall have his rights." "No, Ranulph," she answered firmly, "it shall be in my own time. I must keep the child with me. I know not when I shall speak; I am biding my day. Once I thought I never should speak, but then I did not see all, did not wholly see my duty towards Guilbert. It is so hard to find what is wise and just." "When the proofs are found your child shall have his rights," he said with grim insistence. "I would never let him go from me," she answered, and, leaning over, she impulsively clasped the little Guilbert in her arms. "There'll be no need for Guilbert to go from you," he rejoined, "for when your rights come to you, Philip d'Avranche will not be living." "Will not be living!" she said in amazement. She did not understand. "I mean to kill him," he answered sternly.