"Well, let us hope—— But go on."
"As for Lady Woodroffe, she has actually confessed the thing."
He then proceeded to tell the story of the child's clothes.
The doctor became thoughtful. The audacity of showing and claiming the clothes astonished him.
"It isn't evidence, Dick," he said.
"No; but it's complete proof to the true mother."
"Perhaps—to her."
Sir Robert, in fact, admitted everything. But at this stage a mere admission of the kind meant nothing.
"It was a strange thing to do," said the doctor. "There is the audacity of despair about it. She had quite forgotten the fact that the register of deaths contained the name of the boy. If it had been a common name, it would have mattered little. She did not tell me that the child died in Birmingham. That doctor—what is his name? Ah! I don't know him. Does he know the meaning and bearing of his evidence?"