"And he does not know who he is. He is ignorant of everything, even the fact, the great fact, which you have no right to keep from him----" "John," she cried, starting to her feet, "the boy is mine: I have a right to deal with him as I think best. I will not hear a word you have to say." "It is vain to say anything," said Mrs. Dennistoun; "she will not hear a word." "That is all very well, so far as she is concerned," said John, "but I have a part of my own to play. You give me the name of adviser and so forth--a man cannot be your adviser if his mouth is closed before he speaks. I have a right to speak, being summoned for that purpose. I tell you, Elinor, that you have no right to conceal from the boy who he is, and that his father is alive." She gave a cry as if he had struck her, and shrank away behind her mother, hiding her face in her hands. "I am, more or less, of your opinion, John. I have told her the same. While he was a baby it mattered nothing, now that he is a rational creature with an opinion of his own, like any one of us----" "Mother," cried Elinor, "you are unkind. Oh, you are unkind! What did it matter so long as he was a baby? But now he is just at the age when he would be--if you don't wish to drive me out of my senses altogether, don't say a word more to me of this kind." "Elinor," said John, "I have said nothing on the subject for many years, though I have thought much: and you must for once hear reason. The boy belongs--to his father as much as to you. I have said it! I cannot take it back. He belongs to the family of which he may one day be the head. You cannot throw away his birthright. And think, if you let him grow up like this, not knowing that he has a family or a--unaware whom he belongs to." "Have you done, John?" asked Elinor, who had made two or three efforts to interrupt, and had been beating her foot impatiently upon the ground. "If you ask me in that tone, I suppose I must say yes: though I have a great deal more that I should like to say." "Then hear me speak," cried Elinor. "Of us three at least, I am the only one to whom he belongs. I only have power to decide for him. And I say, No, no: whatever argument there may be, whatever plea you may bring forward, No and no, and after that No! What! at fourteen, just the age when anything that was said to him would tell the most; when he would learn a lesson the quickest, learn what I would die to keep him from! When he would take everything for gospel that was said to him, when the very charm of--of that unknown name----" She stopped for a moment to take breath, half choked by her own words.