toward Lancashire.

"Polly Kegworthy? Yes. She was yer mother."

Paul set his teeth and drew a deep breath--not of air, but of a million
sword points, Jane watched him out of frightened eyes. She alone, with
her all but life-long knowledge of him, and with her woman's intuition,
realized the death-blow that he had received. And when she saw him take
it unflinching and stand proud and stern, her heart leaped toward him,
though she knew that the woman in the great chased silver photograph
frame on the mantelpiece, the great and radiant lady, the high and
mighty and beautiful and unapproachable Princess, was the woman he
loved. Paul touched his father on the wrist, and motioned to a chair.

"Please sit down. You too, please,"--he waved a hand, and himself
resumed his seat in his writing chair. He turned it so that he could
rest his elbow on his table and his forehead in his palm. "You claim to
be my father," said he. "Barney Bill, in whom I have implicit
confidence, confirms it. He says that Mrs. Button is my mother--"

"She has been dead these six years," said Barney Bill.

"Why didn't you tell me?" asked Paul.

"I didn't think it would interest yer, sonny," replied Barney Bill, in
great distress. "Yer see, we conspirated together for yer never to know
nothing at all about all this. Anyway, she's dead and won't worry yer
any more."

"She was a bad mother to me. She is a memory of terror. I don't pretend
to be grieved," said Paul; "any more than I pretend to be overcome by
filial emotion at the present moment. But, if you are my father, I
should be glad to know--in fact, I think I'm entitled to know--why
you've taken thirty years to reveal yourself, and why"--a sudden fury
swept him--"why you've come now to play hell with my life."

"It is the will of God," said Silas Finn, in deep dejection.

Paul snapped three or four fingers. "Bah!" he cried. "Talk sense. Talk
facts. Leave God out of the question for a while. It's blasphemy to
connect Him with a sordid business like this. Tell me about myself--my
parentage--let me know where I am."

"You're with three people as loves yer, sonny," said Barney Bill. "What
passes in this room will never be known to another soul on earth."

"That I swear," said Silas Finn.

"You can publish it broadcast in every newspaper in England," said
Paul. "I'm making no bargains. Good God! I'm asking for nothing but the
truth. What use I make of it is my affair. You can do--the three of