“No; but it is the rule, in estimating coincidences, that each fresh one multiplies the value of the others. Now the boy looking so Italian is a new coincidence, and so is what I am going to tell you—at last I have found the medical man who attended Lady Bassett in London.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, sir; and I have learned Fact 6.—Her ladyship rented a house, but hired no servants, and engaged no nurse. She had no attendant but a lady's maid, no servant but a sort of charwoman.
“Fact 7.—She dismissed this doctor unusually soon, and gave him a very large fee.
“Fact 8.—She concealed her address from her husband.”
“Oh! can you prove that?”
“Certainly. Sir Charles came up to town, and had to hunt for her, came to this very medical man, and asked for the address his wife had not given him; but lo! when he got there the bird was flown.
“Fact 9.—Following the same system of concealment, my lady levanted from London within ten days of her confinement.
“Now put all these coincidences together. Don't you see that she had a lover, and that he was about her in London and other places? Stop! Fact 10.—Those two were married for years, and had no child but this equivocal one; and now four years and a half have passed, during all which time they have had none, and the young parson has been abroad during that period.”
Wheeler was staggered and perplexed by this artful array of coincidences.