“He was the gent that come to see Miss Ruth two years before, wasn’t he?”
“To be sure,” said the doctor. “You see, I am an old friend. Stop a moment,” said the doctor, referring to some notes he had made that morning in Wimpole Street. “Why, let me see, you must be Jane Glyne.”
“Which I ain’t ashamed to own it,” said the woman, pushing back her thin grey hair.
“Of course not,” said the doctor. “You were Mrs Riversley’s servant. You heard, of course, of the struggle between the two young men?”
“I heard of it after,” said the woman sharply; “and what’s more, I heard one of them shriek out at the time. It was when I was going away to where I had left the child.”
“To be sure,” said the doctor quietly; “but Miss Riversley thought it was dead.”
“Yes,” said the woman, “that was missus’s doings. She said no one must know it was alive. That’s why I took pity on the poor little thing, and brought him up.”
“That, and the allowance,” said the doctor significantly.
“Well, thirty pounds a year wasn’t such a deal,” said the woman; “but I somehow got fond of him, because he grew so clever. My! how he used to hate everybody of the name after he got to know who he was. I’ve known him to curse everybody who belonged to him, saying the bite of the dog I saved him from had given him a dog’s nature. It was his going down to the Dingle when he was fifteen and threatening an exposure that gave Mrs Riversley the illness she died of; but I’d made her settle my money on me,” chuckled the hag; “and it’s safe enough as long as I live. He’ll never want now what I saved for him, poor dear! nor me neither. My poor boy—dead!”
The doctor drove back to Wimpole Street, where he had a long talk at the panel with Robert Millet, and the result was that they were both satisfied as to the identity of the elder natural brother of John Huish, whose aim through life seemed to have been to take advantage of his extraordinary resemblance, and to improve it by copying Huish’s dress, carriage, very habits in fact, and using them to the injury of the younger brother, whom he bitterly hated for occupying the position that should have been his.