“So I thought. Mr. Malvern was now unquestionably, whether Sir Charles Malvern or not, the proprietor of the Redwood estates, burthened as with a charge, in accordance with the conditions of the entails, of a thousand pounds life annuity to the late Mr. Redwood’s infant daughter.
“Sir Charles returned to Redwood manor-house, where his wife and family soon afterwards arrived. Lady Redwood had been joined, I understood, by her mother, Mrs. Ashton, and would, when able to undertake the journey, return to her maternal home. It was about two months after Sir Thomas Redwood’s death that I determined to pay Lady Redwood a visit, in order to the winding up of the personal estate, which it was desirable to accomplish as speedily as possible; and then a new and terrible light flashed upon me.”
“What, in heaven’s name!” I exclaimed, for the first time breaking silence—“what could there be to reveal?”
“Only,” rejoined Mr. Repton, “that, ill, delirious, as Lady Redwood admitted herself to have been, it was her intimate, unconquerable conviction that she had given birth to twins!”
“Good God! And you suspect”——
“We don’t know what to suspect. Should the lady’s confident belief be correct, the missing child might have been a boy. You understand?”
“I do. But is there any tangible evidence to justify this horrible suspicion?”
“Yes; the surgeon-apothecary and his wife, a Mr. and Mrs. Williams, who attended lady Redwood, have suddenly disappeared from Chester, and, from no explainable motive, having left or abandoned a fair business there.”
“That has certainly an ugly look.”
“True; and a few days ago I received information that Williams has been seen in Birmingham. He was well dressed, and not apparently in any business.”