Jean Jacques.

"Well, in translation only," she retorted, and with her sharp white teeth
she again bit the black thread of her needle, tied the end into a little
knot, and began to mend the waistcoat which she had laid down in the
first moments of the interview.

"I want the child," Jean Jacques insisted abruptly. "I'll wait till she
wakes, and then I'll wrap her up and take her away."

"Didn't you hear me say she was to be brought up English?" asked Norah,
with a slowness which clothed her fiercest impulses.

"Name of God, do you think I'll let you have her!" returned Jean Jacques
with asperity and decision. "You say you are alone, you and your M'sieu'
Nolan. Well, I am alone--all alone in the world, and I need her--Mother
of God, I need her more than I ever needed anything in my life! You have
each other, but I have only myself, and it is not good company. Besides,
the child is mine, a Barbille of Barbilles, une legitime--a rightful
child of marriage. But if it was a love-child only it would still be
mine, being my daughter's child. Look you, it is no such thing. It is
of those who can claim inheritance back to Louis XI. She will be to me
the gift of God in return for the robbery of death."

He leaned over the cradle, and his look was like that of one who had
found a treasure in the earth.

Now she struck hard. Yet very subtly too did she attack him. "You--you
are thinking of yourself, m'sieu', only of yourself. Aren't you going to
think of the child at all? It isn't yourself that counts so much.