The doctor nodded and left; and by that time next day he had come to the conclusion that there were strange lives in this world, for he had had such information as took him to an old house in a City lane, where he had gazed upon the face of the dead semblance of the man he knew to be lying ill in the Surrey cottage. Moreover, he had found with the dead a thin, harsh-spoken woman, red-eyed and passionate with weeping, and ready on the slightest encouragement to burst into a torrent of grief and adulation of "her boy," as she called him. "So handsome and so brave as he was, and such a gent as he could make himself, and live with swells," she sobbed, "though he wouldn't know me sometimes in the street." "Did you know his father and mother?" said the doctor, hazarding a shot. "I am his mother," said the woman sharply. "Poor, brave, handsome boy! The times I've found him in money, and warned him about danger, and watched for him when he wanted it done. I am his mother." "Nonsense!" said the doctor. "You don't know me. I attended Captain Millet after his fall in the gravel-pit near the Dingle." "He was the gent that come to see Miss Ruth two years before, wasn't he?" "To be sure," said the doctor. "You see, I am an old friend. Stop a moment," said the doctor, referring to some notes he had made that morning in Wimpole Street. "Why, let me see, you must be Jane Glyne." "Which I ain't ashamed to own it," said the woman, pushing back her thin grey hair. "Of course not," said the doctor. "You were Mrs Riversley's servant. You heard, of course, of the struggle between the two young men?" "I heard of it after," said the woman sharply; "and what's more, I heard one of them shriek out at the time. It was when I was going away to where I had left the child." "To be sure," said the doctor quietly; "but Miss Riversley thought it was dead." "Yes," said the woman, "that was missus's doings. She said no one must know it was alive. That's why I took pity on the poor little thing, and brought him up." "That, and the allowance," said the doctor significantly. "Well, thirty pounds a year wasn't such a deal," said the woman; "but I somehow got fond of him, because he grew so clever. My! how he used to hate everybody of the name after he got to know who he was. I've known him to curse everybody who belonged to him, saying the bite of the dog I saved him from had given him a dog's nature. It was his going down to the Dingle when he was fifteen and threatening an exposure that gave Mrs Riversley the illness she died of; but I'd made her settle my money on me," chuckled the hag; "and it's safe enough as long as I live. He'll never want now what I saved for him, poor dear! nor me neither. My poor boy--dead!"