his heart failed him.'

'And I am that child?'

Mr. Fishwick looked away guiltily, passing his tongue over his lips. He
was the picture of shame and remorse.

'Yes,' he said. 'Your father and mother were French. He was a teacher of
French at Bristol, his wife French from Canterbury. No relations
are known.'

'My name?' she asked, smiling piteously.

'Pare,' he said, spelling it. And he added, 'They call it Parry.'

She looked round the room in a kind of terror, not unmixed with wonder.
To that room they had retired to review their plans on their first
arrival at the Castle Inn--when all smiled on them. Thither they had
fled for refuge after the brush with Lady Dunborough and the rencontre
with Sir George. To that room she had betaken herself in the first flush
and triumph of Sir George's suit; and there, surrounded by the same
objects on which she now gazed, she had sat, rapt in rosy visions,
through the livelong day preceding her abduction. Then she had been a
gentlewoman, an heiress, the bride in prospect of a gallant
gentleman. Now?

What wonder that, as she looked round in dumb misery, recognising these
things, her eyes grew wild again; or that the shrinking lawyer expected
an outburst. It came, but from another quarter. The old woman rose and
trembling pointed a palsied finger at him. 'Yo' eat your words!' she
said. 'Yo' eat your words and seem to like them. But didn't yo' tell me
no farther back than this day five weeks that the law was clear? Didn't
yo' tell me it was certain? Yo' tell me that!'

'I did! God forgive me,' Mr. Fishwick murmured from the depths of his
abasement.

'Didn't yo' tell me fifty times, and fifty times to that, that the case
was clear?' the old woman continued relentlessly. 'That there were
thousands and thousands to be had for the asking? And her right besides,
that no one could cheat her of, no more than me of the things my
man left me?'

'I did, God forgive me!' the lawyer said.

'But yo' did cheat me!' she continued with quavering insistence, her
withered face faintly pink. 'Where is the home yo' ha' broken up? Where
are the things my man left me? Where's the bit that should ha' kept me
from the parish? Where's the fifty-two pounds yo' sold all for and ha'
spent on us, living where's no place for us, at our betters' table? Yo'
ha' broken my heart! Yo' ha' laid up sorrow and suffering for the girl
that is dearer to me than my heart. Yo' ha' done all that, and yo' can
come