apology for having said anything against the governess.
“He’s in the British Museum; but he is not really her father. He adopted her and brought her up, that’s all. She was left on his doorstep, I believe.”
“Really! How interesting! Do tell me all about it.”
“There’s not very much to tell,” said Lionel. “Herbert Scott has been in the Museum five-and-twenty years, I believe, and has always lived in the same little house in Kensington. He began life in India, and I fancy he must be almost sixty. One morning, about twenty-two years ago, he was lying awake at dawn, when he heard a child crying just under his window. At first he paid no attention to the sound, but as it went on persistently, he went down and opened the door. He found a little girl baby, nicely dressed and quite clean, lying on the doorstep, kicking and screaming. He thought the baby might be about a year old. That’s the story.”
“Except the rest of it,” observed Miss Trevelyan. “The interesting thing would be to know what he did with it—a man living alone, and who had probably never touched a baby in his life!”
“He went to the police and made inquiries, and advertised, but as he could not get any information, and the woman servant he had was a respectable middle-aged widow who was fond of children, they kept it and brought it up. That’s all I know.”
“I have heard of such things before,” said Anne Trevelyan thoughtfully. “The child must have been kidnapped by thieves who tried to get a ransom and failed.”
“Or gipsies,” suggested Lionel.
“No, not gipsies. They hardly ever give up a child they have stolen, unless they are in danger of being caught; and if that had been the case in your story, the child’s parents would probably have claimed it, for they would have been employing detectives, and the police would have been informed. I should think the baby Mr. Scott found must have been an orphan in charge of some relations who were glad to get rid of it.”