“Well, my dear, I think—but it must not influence us in any degree—that this young man really is George Harrington.”
Gertrude tried to stifle the emotion she felt, as the doctor went on:
“It is a puzzling business, my dear. We have had a very long interview at Hampton’s chambers, and he certainly has impressed me strangely. Our friend here is like a rock, and he has been piling on to my head stories of impostures, and cases where pretenders have come forward, till I am completely bewildered.”
“Then if he is not the true George Harrington, let George Harrington himself come forward and say so. Why doesn’t he come back, instead of running off in this mysterious way?”
Mrs Hampton looked quite fiercely to right and left as she delivered herself of this speech.
The old lawyer seemed to decline to take up the cudgels; he only tapped softly on the table. But Mrs Hampton’s tongue was unloosed, and she turned the flow of her eloquence upon the doctor.
“I say this is the right man,” she cried; “everything goes to prove it. I have not said anything about this before, but I have noticed a great deal since I have been here, and I kept my lips sealed because I felt that I might be doing wrong in speaking, and, besides, I had no right.”
“What have you observed, then?” said the lawyer, turning upon her sharply.
“That time after time, while he was professing to be so sober, our Mr George Harrington sat drinking with Saul half, and sometimes all the night. Three times over did old Mrs Denton come to me, pretending it was to help her about some domestic matter, over which she did not want to trouble Gertrude here, and it was to show me Mr George Harrington asleep in the study, where he had been all night. Ah! here she is. Mrs Denton, how many times did you find the gentleman—bah!—the man who came and said he was Mr Harrington—asleep in his chair in the study.”
“Six, ma’am,” said the old housekeeper. “No: it was eight.”