"I shall not be insulted, whatever you say. I am here to tell you that the proofs have now closed round you so completely, that there is not left, I verily believe, a single loophole of escape."
Lady Woodroffe rose with dignity. "You talk to me, sir—to me?—of escape and loophole. Go, sir—go to my solicitors."
"Certainly." Richard continued, however, to occupy his chair. "I will go to your solicitors whenever you please. I would rather go to them than come here. But for the sake of others, I would prefer that you should acknowledge the fact, and let the son go back to his mother. He is my own half-brother, but it is not fraternal affection that prompts me in this research, I assure you. If you refuse to hear me, I shall have to go to your solicitors through Mrs. Haveril's solicitors."
"Oh, go on, then!"
She sat down again, and crossed her hands in her lap, assuming something of the expression of a person bored to death by a very bad sermon.
"I have certain evidence in my hands, then"—he could not avoid a smile of satisfaction—"which connects you with the dead child—your child."
Lady Woodroffe caught her breath and started, as if in sudden pain.
"Go on, sir."
"I will tell you what it is. You arrived one evening at the Great Midland Hotel, Birmingham, with an Indian ayah and a child. You engaged three rooms—a sitting-room and two bedrooms; you explained that the child had been taken suddenly and alarmingly ill in the train; you sent out for a medical man; he came; he kept the maids running about with hot water, and the boys going out for remedies and prescriptions; he stayed with you all night, watching the case; in the morning your child was dead; three days afterwards you buried him. There is no monument over the child's grave, because you made an arrangement with the help of Dr. Robert Steele, and substituted another child for him, and you went away two or three days after the funeral, and disappeared. The rooms were taken in your name; the books of the hotel prove so much."
"Oh! This man is tedious—tedious—with his repetitions."