“No doubt,” said Mr. Blotting, “there will be no want of proof. The little lord’s rights are safe enough. But who’s to have the custody?—not a mad mother who disowns him——”
“Sir!” cried Mrs. Hill, springing to her feet.
“Mr. Blotting,” said the vicar, “forgets, my dear—forgets of whom he’s speaking. Such a phrase used of my daughter——”
“I beg your pardon,” said the man of business. He looked at Agnes, who had said nothing, whose eyes were anxiously fixed upon him. “I mean no offence. I must face the facts. What would the Court of Chancery or any other authority think of a mother who denied that her child was hers? She says she knows nothing about it, that she never had a child. It’s monstrous; it’s incredible. She says the most astounding things.”
“What, what?” cried the old people, both together. They were half reproachful of Mary, wholly impatient of her folly, yet half excusing and apologizing all the time.
“She says it is quite impossible she could ever have done such a thing. I can only give you the poor lady’s own words. She says she was bound in honor to someone—a woman’s name—probably you will know. Poor soul! Bound in honor to Jane or Marjorie never to have a child! I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but who do you think would give her the charge even of her own affairs after such a speech as that?”
“Who is Jane or Marjorie?” said the vicar, mouthing the words. “I don’t know anybody of those names.”
The mother and daughter looked at each other. They were under no difficulty in understanding. “Oh,” said Mrs. Hill, “her worst enemy! Do you mean to say that after all my poor child has borne from that woman——”
“Dear mother!” said Agnes. “Oh, let us wait a little—let us do nothing in a hurry. I suppose it has been known before that a poor woman might be sane enough with one delusion. That is Mary’s case. She is sane, but she has forgotten. She never saw her baby. It seized her at once, that terrible trouble. She never knew. Don’t you remember, mother, how she lay like a log, never caring, never looking at him. Oh, Mr. Blotting, don’t let her be sent away again for that! In every other way she is sane, my poor sister is sane.”
“I am sincerely sorry for you, Miss Hill,” the lawyer said. But he gave no pledge, he made no promise. “It will depend chiefly upon John Parke,” he said, “as one of the executors, and the child’s uncle. He of course is the natural guardian. And he no doubt will hear what the doctors have to say, and decide what is best to be done with Lady Frogmore.”