And the boy was dead.
The ayah crouched down on a stool beside her mistress, and began whispering in her own language. But the lady understood.
As she listened her face grew harder, her mouth showed resolution.
"Enough," she said; "you have told me enough. You can be silent?—for my sake, for the sake of the sahib? Yes—yes—I can trust you. Let me think."
Presently she went out; she walked at random into street after street. She stopped, letting chance direct her, at a surgery with a red lamp, in a mean quarter. She read the name. She entered, and asked to see Dr. Steele, not knowing anything at all about the man.
She was received by a young man of five and twenty or so. She stated her object in calling.
"The child I want," she said, "should be something like the child I have lost. He must have light hair and blue eyes."
"And the age?"
"He must not be more than eighteen months or less than a year. My own child was thirteen months old. He was born on December 2, 1872."