"This is my plan, agreed to by your injured mother. They are both in London now, ever spreading their calumnies about, though I hear that none heed them, and Robert St. Amande endeavours unsuccessfully to borrow money on what he terms his succession. Now, we have decided to ask both these men to attend at my house on the same morning on which I intend to proclaim you--only they are not to know that there will be any other persons present but themselves. Thus, they will suddenly find that they are surrounded by auditors, as well as some witnesses who knew you in your childhood. There will be, also, the papers you have forwarded me signed and testified to by O'Rourke, and by these means we hope either to extort the truth from them, or at least so to strike terror to them, that they shall prevaricate and contradict their own lying statements. And, remember, there will be a strong array against them." "The idea is most excellent," exclaimed Gerald. "Surely thus they must be beaten down. And will my mother be there, my lord?" "Your mother will be there, but her presence will be unknown to them. Yet she vows that, if Considine does not deny before all assembled the wickedness of the slanders he has put about, she will come forward and confront him and dare him to utter them to her face. "'Twill be a terrible ordeal for her," my husband said. "Heaven grant she may be able to endure it." "She will endure it; she will so string herself up that none regarding her will be able to imagine her a weak woman who sometimes cannot raise herself even from her bed. Yet, since she has dwelt under my care----" "For which I say again God bless you--for that and all the other luxuries and comforts you have surrounded her with." "'Tis but little," replied the Marquis. "And she is desolate and the mother of my heir. 'Tis nothing. But, as I say, since she hath been with me I have seen some most marvellous moments of recovery with her, moments when she would suddenly exclaim that she was once more well and strong. And, to show me that she was so, she would lift some great weight or walk up and down her chamber a dozen times, yet ever afterwards there came directly a relapse when she would again sink into her chair helpless as a babe once more." "Ay," said my husband thoughtfully, "so have I seen her too. Nor do I doubt that if she stands face to face with that craven hound, she will lack no strength to cow him." In a little while you shall see that that strength was not lacking, you shall see how it was exerted against the miserable wretch who had blighted her life. But the place to tell it is not here.