“Very well, then, darling; I will keep you. Do not be afraid,” said Roma.
Then turning to the lawyer, she added:
“I ought to tell you, perhaps, that the child has, or had, a great-grandmother, a Madam Arbuthnot, of Arbuthnot, in the Highlands of Scotland—a woman of rank, who discarded this child’s grandmother more than thirty years ago, since when there seems to have been no communication at all. The old lady, if living, must be nearly eighty, I should think. Under the circumstances, ought I to write to her?”
“Yes,” answered the two gentlemen simultaneously.
Then the doctor arose and took leave.
But the lawyer lingered.
“I have something to tell you,” he said. “I could not tell before. It is good news, my dear Roma. William Harcourt is found.”
CHAPTER II
A MAN OF WOE
To return to Will Harcourt, and that fifteenth of November, when, at midnight, he disappeared from the Isle of Storms.
The earth was as heavily burdened with sorrow that night as all nights. There were men and women and children starving, freezing, perishing, in garrets, in cellars, and in the streets; there were men and women and children watching the dying faces of their best beloved; there were human beings languishing in prisons, hospitals, lunatic asylums; there were criminals in condemned cells, waiting the execution of their death sentence; but perhaps the most miserable being on the face of the burdened earth on that fifteenth of November was Will Harcourt, as he turned away from the face of his beloved and confiding Roma and walked with his Evil Genius down to the water side to take the boat.