“Where did it happen? You hail from Clapham, I believe. Was it there?”
“Yes, if you will ask.”
“Where is Clapham?”
“It is a suburb of London.”
“And she came under your administrations there—officially, I suppose.”
He rallied a little, struggling to assert himself.
“Do you bear in mind, Gaskett, of whom you speak—who it is whose errors—whose long-repented errors—you are probing?”
“The repentance came too late for me, sir; and, in any case, if it is religion, it is not reason to make me its scapegoat.”
“You were a child of wrath—a pledge of sinfulness foregone.”
“I see—a sort of whipping-boy to Grace. But I have ceased to be a boy—there’s the devil of it, Mr Pugsley. If you don’t know who my father was, does Lord Skene know?”