At first he only grasped the fact that Philip d'Avranche was the husband
of the woman he loved, and that she had been abandoned. Then sudden
remembrance stunned him: Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy, had another
wife. He remembered--it had been burned into his brain the day he saw
it first in the Gazette de Jersey--that he had married the Comtesse
Chantavoine, niece of the Marquis Grandjon-Larisse, upon the very day,
and but an hour before, the old Duc de Bercy suddenly died. It flashed
across his mind now what he had felt then. He had always believed that
Philip had wronged Guida; and long ago he would have gone in search of
him--gone to try the strength of his arm against this cowardly marauder,
as he held him--but his father's ill-health had kept him where he was,
and Philip was at sea upon the nation's business. So the years had gone
on until now.

His brain soon cleared. All that he had ever thought upon the matter now
crystallised itself into the very truth of the affair. Philip had
married Guida secretly; but his new future had opened up to him all at
once, and he had married again--a crime, but a crime which in high places
sometimes goes unpunished. How monstrous it was that such vile
wickedness should be delivered against this woman before him, in whom
beauty, goodness, power were commingled! She was the real Princess
Philip d'Avranche, and this child of hers--now he understood why she
allowed Guilbert to speak no patois.

They scarcely knew how long they stood silent, she with her hand stroking
the child's golden hair, he white and dazed, looking, looking at her and
the child, as the thing resolved itself to him. At last, in a voice
which neither he nor she could quite recognise as his own, he said: