"Yes, I'm all right, I hope. But I'm a bit under the weather. Things have gone curiously crooked ever since Vivian died. I was a fool. I won't disguise that; but somehow my luck seemed so good that a few little troubles never looked worth considering. Then, just before he went, I got into a regular thunderstorm. It blew up against the steady wind of my good fortune, as thunderstorms will. Vivian did me a good turn by dying just when he did--I can't deny it; and everything is all right now--for all practical purposes. The silver mine will be a wonder of the world by all accounts. Still, I've had a good deal to trouble me, and things look worse when a man's sick." "Shall you be giving Polly Bassett her money soon? Heathman tells me her husband's grumbling a bit." "All in good time. When our Cora is married I shall try and fork out a good slice of Vivian's estate. Ned must have the capital he wants, and I've got to find a hundred for Cora's wedding gift." "Why do that yet?" "I'll do it if I have to sell myself up," he said fiercely. "Isn't she my first favourite of our three? Don't I worship the ground she goes on, and love her better than anything in the world after you yourself?" She sighed. "How it weighs heavier and heavier after all these years! And I always thought 'twould weigh lighter and lighter. We were fools to have childer. But for them we could have let the world know and been married, and gived back the five thousand to your wife's people. But not now--never now, for the children's sake, I suppose." "They'll know in good time, and none else. When I come to my end, I'm going to tell 'em I'm their father, according to your wish, and because I've promised you on my oath to do it; but none else must ever know it; and it would be a wiser thing, Priscilla, if you could only see it so, that they didn't either." "They must know, and they shall." "Well, it may be sooner than anybody thinks. The position is clear enough: I might have married and still kept the five thousand, because the lawyers said that my dead wife's wish wouldn't hold water in law; but I didn't know that till 'twas too late, and your first child had come. Then we talked it out, and you was content and so was I. Now there are three of them, and though I'd face the music so brave as you and go to my grave spurned by all men, if necessary, what would better it for them? Nothing short of an Act of Parliament would make 'em legitimate now. I kept the condition of my dead wife, because you urged me to do it and weren't feared of the consequences; but now, though I can make you my lawful wife, I can't make them my lawful children, and therefore surely 'tis better they shall never know they are my children at all?" "'Twas a promise," she said, "and I hold you to it. I'm fixed on it that they shall know."