They poured in thick and fast till the law intervened in the person of a posse of officials who represented the Sheriff of London, and then Hetty was permitted to pack up her belongings and those of the child and depart. Gilbert Lawrence received them with open arms. Bruce was there, pleased enough to get Hetty from the house where she had suffered so much. But there was a white despairing look that caused Hetty to forget her own troubles.
The white look did not even vanish when Hetty spoke of her previous night's adventure.
"It was part of a plot to ruin us both," Bruce said moodily. "I should have been charged with criminal carelessness, which is fatal to a doctor, and you would have been guilty of administering an overdose. That woman, we know who she was, changed the bottles once and would have changed them again, in fact that is why she returned--the Countess."
"Oh, no," Hetty cried. "She never could have done that. Her own child, Bruce? Fancy a mother sacrificing the life of her own child to gratify a vengeance! I could not think as badly of her as that."
Bruce smiled wearily.
"Are you quite sure," he asked, "that Mamie is her own child?"
Hetty had no reply for the moment. That idea had never occurred to her before. Certainly she had never looked upon the Countess as a model mother; indeed, she had never seen her display what might be called natural affection.
"We shall probably never know," she said after a pause. "But as to your own trouble, Gordon, dear Gordon, why don't you confide in me?"
The appeal in the thrilling tender voice touched him. He took the slim figure in his arms and kissed the red lips.
"It's ruin," he said simply, "nothing else. A little time ago it looked to me as if all my ambitions were to be realised. And then this crushing misfortune comes upon me. My practice falls away, and I could not get my money in. Of course I can't dun patients like mine. It didn't matter till lately, because the guineas I got from consultations were keeping me going. But these morning callers call no more. I was pressed here and there, and I borrowed money."