What would you have? the Colonel asked piteously, in the dead of
night, of his own conscience. How else could he have acted? He said
nothing. That was all, mind you, he declared to himself more than
once in his own soul. He told no lies. He made no complications.
While the Admiral lived, he brought up Lucy's sons, quite privately,
at Plymouth. And as soon as ever the Admiral died, he really and
truly meant to acknowledge them.
But fathers never die--in entailed estates. The Admiral lived so
long--quite, quite too long for Guy and Cyril. Granville was born,
and grew to be a big boy, and was treated by everybody as the heir
to Tilgate. And now the Colonel's difficulties gathered thicker
around him. At last, in the fulness of time, the Admiral died, and
slept with his fathers, whose Elizabethan ruff's were the honour
and glory of the chancel at Tilgate; and then the day of reckoning
was fairly upon him. How well he remembered that awful hour. He
couldn't, he couldn't. He knew it was his duty to acknowledge his
rightful sons and heirs, but he hadn't the courage. Things had all
altered so much.
Meanwhile, Guy and Cyril had gone to Charterhouse as nobody's
wards, and been brought up in the expectation of earning their
own livelihood, so no wrong, he said casuistically, had been done
to THEM, at any rate.
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