‘Honestly! Why, it’s our own—leastways it’s the mother’s.’
‘Do you mean that you are its mother?’ she asked of Mrs. Larkins.
‘Certainly I do! Do you dispute it?’
‘Mother? Yes. It may be so. But you, you man, you are not his father? You cannot be. It is impossible, simply impossible. Why, the child has his eyes; his own dear eyes, I could swear to them among a thousand. You cannot, you shall not deceive me. How came you by this child?’
‘He’s not my own son, that I won’t deny,’ said the Sergeant. ‘But he is my missus’s; she was a widow when I married her, and—’
‘I must have the boy. You cannot refuse him to me. I will buy him of you; will pay you any price you please. But he must leave this place. It is no place for him.’
And she gazed scornfully at the humble surroundings. The little dark vaulted room with its one deep recessed window, its inner space curtained off to form a second bedroom, the litter and mess about the floor.
‘This is no place for—’
She paused suddenly, and a wild scared look came over her face. A footman, one of her own people, a tall, black-whiskered and pompous Jeames, was standing in the doorway, and the sudden apparition seemed to put a seal upon her tongue.
‘The horses, m’lady,’ said the man respectfully enough, although there was an accent of authority in his voice. ‘The horses have been standing nearly half an hour, m’lady, and the coachman says—’