"I always knew my natural father was a cad. He seduced and abanoned my mother. But ... one always imagines he was simply the sort who didn't know better. And that he didn't come back to take care of her because he did not realize the condition he'd left her in. The difficulties of raising a foreigner's bastard in the hills. A worthless man, certainly, but maybe still not that unworthy. Merely dismissable from one's mind for his sheer ignorance" A breath. "But I have recently been informed of who he is." Breath. "And Nathaniel Richards is not an ignorant man."