“Don’t be a fool, John Parke,” cried his wife. “Frogmore was proud of him, as you know. He hated me. He would never have married Mary Hill but to have his revenge on me. Do you think I don’t feel it, her set up in my place? And wouldn’t I turn that brat to the door if I could, oh! without a moment’s thought. But I’m not a fool,” said Letitia. “The woman’s mad--she doesn’t know what she’s saying. There’s dozens of witnesses to prove it if she denies. The doctor and the nurse and all the servants in the house, and her mother, and--we needn’t go further--myself. John Parke, don’t be a fool. You’ll never get the better of her in that way.” “All the same,” said John, who had recovered the first dismay caused by her contradiction while she went on speaking. “All the same, I think it’s worth fighting--with the mother at your back.” “The mother!” she said, with contempt. “She’d go raving mad in the witness-box, and that would be fine proof for you. Why, the child was born before all the world, so to speak, like the heir to the crown. You might as well fight the one as the other. Oh, it is not for any love of them, you may be sure, that I speak!” “I don’t understand you, Letitia,” said John. “I’d fight it to the last, if it was any good, but as for turning the child out of doors or so forth as you talk in your wild way----” “You would leave me to do that,” said Letitia, with a snarl, “and so I should, and never think twice either of him or his mother. Duke, what do you mean staring at me like that? You don’t understand what we’re talking about. Run away and play. Go to the nursery or wherever you live when you’re here.” “Mamma, Mar’s quite a little fellow; he doesn’t know very much, but he’s a very nice little fellow. If it is Mar you and papa are going to turn out of the house----” Letitia burst into a shrill laugh. She pushed her boy away from her. “Go off to your play, you little ---- dunce,” she said. “Mar! why, Mar’s the master of the house, don’t you know: he’s Lord Frogmore. It’s we that Mar will turn out of the house if we don’t mind. You had better go and ask him to be kind to papa, and not send us away.” Father and son looked on with equally bewildered faces at this burst of merriment, which they could not understand. “I am sure,” said Duke, “that Mar would be very fond of papa if he’d let him, and never, never think of turning anyone away. Mar is--why, Mar is--Mamma! Mar’s father’s dead, and his mother has forgotten him, and he’s a very, very little boy.”