Prudence returned to confront her father and brother, both of them disturbed, though in different degrees, by her unlooked for interference. Mr Graynor regretted having allowed her to be present at the interview, while William resented deeply the fact that his double life should have been revealed to the young sister whom he had systematically snubbed and preached to all the years she had lived in the home. The knowledge that she wished to adopt his bastard son was insupportable. "Let me beg, sir," he said, crimson and spluttering for words, "that you won't permit this. It's indecent. It's--unthinkable. I can't agree to it." "It has nothing," Prudence answered quietly, "to do with you." Mr Graynor fixed his dim angry eyes on his son's face, the passion which he had kept under until now blazing up like a conflagration fanned by a sudden draught. He had never felt so humiliated and ashamed in all the years of his long life. For generations they had lived in Wortheton, honourable men and women, with an unsullied record which it remained for the present generation to smirch. It hurt him in his most vulnerable spot, his pride, that this base and sordid sin should be laid to his son's charge. "You despicable hypocrite!" he shouted. "How dare you question the right of any one to undertake a responsibility you are not man enough to shoulder? Had I known before of this low intrigue I would have compelled you to marry the mother of your child. Fortunately for her, she has found a better fate. As for the child--" He broke off abruptly, and turned in his seat and sat looking into the fire. "Prudence and I will settle that matter," he added more quietly. "Leave it to us." Without uttering another word, William went heavily out of the room. Prudence approached the old man, who sat, a shrunken dejected figure, before the hearth, and kneeling on the carpet beside him, put her arms about him lovingly, and remained so in silence, while he looked steadily into the fire, thinking back--hearing again in imagination her indignant young voice speaking out of the past: "I will pray hard night and morning that God will befriend Bessie Clapp." He put a hand upon her hair and smoothed it caressingly. "This is a blow, Prue," he said. "It hits me hard." He roused himself after a while and sat straighter in his chair and looked at her inquiringly. "What makes you think you would like to have the child?" he asked. "Because I have no little one of my own," she answered. "And this little child's life promises to be a sad one. He has a claim on our consideration; the same blood runs in his veins." "That is what makes your proposition impossible, as I see it," he said. "Edward would not wish it. Think of the disgrace, my dear. One likes to hide these things."