tered
on to the corner of the street close by. Here he leant against the post,
and lighted a cigar, and stopped there smoking in an idle way, but
keeping his face always turned in the direction of the house-door.

I waited and waited still. I waited and waited, with my eyes riveted to
the door of the house. At last I thought I saw it open in the dusk, and
then felt sure I heard it shut again softly. Though I tried hard to
compose myself, I trembled so that I was obliged to call for Peggy to
help me on with my bonnet and cloak, and was forced to take her arm to
lean on, in crossing the street.

Trottle opened the door to us, before we could knock. Peggy went back,
and I went in. He had a lighted candle in his hand.

"It has happened, ma'am, as I thought it would," he whispered, leading me
into the bare, comfortless, empty parlour. "Barsham and his mother have
consulted their own interests, and have come to terms. My guess-work is
guess-work no longer. It is now what I felt it was--Truth!"

Something strange to me--something which women who are mothers must often
know--trembled suddenly in my heart, and brought the warm tears of my
youthful days thronging back into my eyes. I took my faithful old
servant by the hand, and asked him to let me see Mrs. Kirkland's child,
for his mother's sake.

"If you desire it, ma'am," said Trottle, with a gentleness of manner that
I had never noticed in him before. "But pray don't think me wanting in
duty and right feeling, if I beg you to try and wait a little. You are
agitated already, and a first meeting with the child will not help to
make you so calm, as you would wish to be, if Mr. Forley's messenger
comes. The little boy is safe up-stairs. Pray think first of trying to
compose yourself for a meeting with a stranger; and believe me you shall
not leave the house afterwards without the child."

I felt that Trottle was right, and sat down as patiently as I could in a
chair he had thoughtfully placed ready for me. I was so horrified at the
discovery of my own relation's wickedness that when Trottle proposed to
make me acquainted with the confession wrung from Barsham and his mother,
I begged him to spare me all details, and only to tell me what was
necessary about George Forley.

"All that can be said for Mr. Forley, ma'am, is, that he was just
scrupulous enough to hide the child's existence and blot out its
parentage here, instead of consenting, at the first, to it