Patience sprang towards him like an enraged tigress, her eyes flashing fire.

"Not by you," she hissed, with her mouth so close to his face that he could feel her hot breath upon his cheek. "Not by you--I've brought him up all these years by myself without troubling you for money--he thinks his birth is honourable and has every chance of making a career for himself, so you are not going to mar it for your own vile ends."

"Don't lose your temper," he said coolly, "I'll do what I please."

"I have your promise not to claim him," she panted with a look of despair in her eyes, "your sacred promise."

The artist laughed in a gibing manner.

"Bah! That for my promise," he said, snapping his fingers in the air. "I'm not going to lose the chance of making money out of him for any sentimental rubbish."

"You will tell him you are his father?"

"I will."

"And that you deserted us both in London?"

Beaumont winced at the sting of her words.

"I'll tell him what I think fit," he said angrily, "and make him do what I please. I am his father."

"Will you, indeed?" she observed jeeringly, though her face worked in convulsive rage. "You are the father who deserted him when a child and now want to make money out him; you would disgrace him in his own eyes by telling him the real story of his birth. I tell you no, Basil Beaumont, you'll do no such thing."

"Who will stop me?"

"I will."

"A very laudable intention, but how do you propose to carry it out?"

"I will tell him the whole story of my sin," she said deliberately. "How I loved you and was betrayed, how you left both him and me to starve in the streets of London and only claim him as a son to make money out of his one gift. I'll tell him all this, and then we'll see if he respects and obeys you."

"He is my son."

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