"I suppose so, Dick, though really I don't see what you are driving at."
"Very well, then. We go on. Why did the doctor go out of his way to invite Humphrey to meet his true mother? Now, I know Dr. Steele. He's an awfully good fellow—charitable and good-natured; he'll do anything for a man; but he's a man of science, and he's always watching and thinking and putting things together. I've heard him talk about heredity, and what a man gets from his ancestors. Now, I'm quite certain, Molly—without any proof—I don't want any proof. Hang your hard-and-fast matter-of-fact evidence! I am quite certain, I say, that Steele invited Humphrey and his mother and myself in order to look at us all and watch differences and likenesses. You see, the case may be a beautiful illustration of hereditary qualities. Here is a young man separated from his own people from infancy. There can be no imitation; and now, after twenty years and more, the man of science can contemplate the son, brought up in a most aristocratic and superior atmosphere; the mother, who has always remained in much the same condition except for money; and another son, who has been brought up like his father, a vagabond and a wanderer—with a fiddle. It was a lovely chance for him. I saw him looking at us all dinner-time; in the evening, when I was playing, I saw him, under his bushy eyebrows, looking from Humphrey to his mother. I wondered why. Now I know. The doctor, Molly, is an accomplice."
"An accomplice! Oh! And a man in that position!"
"An accomplice after the act, not before it. My theory is this: Dr. Steele met the lady after he came to town. How he managed to raise himself from the cheap general practitioner to a leading London physician, one doesn't know. It's like stepping from thirty shillings a week to being a star at fifty pounds; no one knows how it's done. Do you think Lady Woodroffe was useful in talking about him? If I wrote a story, I should make the doctor dog the lady's footsteps and coerce her into advancing him. But this isn't a story. However, I take it that he met her, recognized her, and that they agreed that nothing was to be said about this little transaction of the past. Then, of course, when Alice turned up unexpectedly, and asked where the child was to be seen, there was nothing to do except to hold up his hands and protest that he knew nothing about the child."
"But all this is guess-work, Dick."
"Yes. I am afraid we have nothing before us but guess-work. Unless we get some facts to go upon. Look here. A woman is standing on one side of a high wall; another woman is on the other side of the wall. There is a door in the wall; Sir Robert keeps the key of that door in his pocket. There is only one key, and he has it. Unless he consents to unlock the door, those two women can never meet. And so my half-brother will remain upon his eminence."
They fell into a gloomy silence.
Dick broke it. "Molly, what about our good friend, the mother of this interesting changeling?"
"She is strangely comforted by the reflection that the matter is in your hands. Dick, you have found favour in her sight and in her husband's."