The woman was dying, but quite conscious. The workhouse-master was with the doctor.
"It's an extraordinary story she tells," said the master. "She says she is the Marchioness of —————."
The doctor looked pityingly at the poor creature, who was in the last stage of a fatal disease, and bent down to listen to something she was saying.
"It's quite true," she said. "We separated, you know, a good many years ago, and I never saw him afterwards. What was the good? But I should like him to know I'm dying—if you can find him."
The doctor, hearing the name of the nobleman, remembered something of the story. He went away and made inquiries, which resulted in his being able to find the dying woman's husband.
The Marquis, an elderly man, came to the bedside of his dying wife and forgave her. He waited till the end. When the Marchioness was dead he shook hands with the doctor, thanked him for his kindness, and said he would try and get enough money to have her ladyship decently buried. He kept his word.
Five years afterwards the doctor was rung up at one o'clock in the morning. He put his head out of the window and found that the Marquis had called upon him.
"Doctor," said the Marquis, "I'm married again, and I want you to come to my wife at once."
In the early hours of the morning an heir to the ancient title was bom in lodgings in a little suburban side street.
Up to the present the doctor has not received his fee. He did not press for it. He knew how terribly straitened were the circumstances of the nobleman, whose first wife died in the work-house, and whose second wife presented him with an heir in cheap London lodgings.