“Kind?” cried Miss Bethune, with an indignation and scorn which nothing could exceed. Then she added more gently, but with still the injured tone in her voice: “Will you tell me something about him? It will calm you down. I take an interest in the young man. He is like somebody I once knew, and his name recalls----” “Perhaps you knew his father?” said Mrs. Bristow. “Perhaps. I would like to hear more particulars. He tells me his mother is living.” “The father was very foolish to tell him. Mr. Bristow always said so. It was on his deathbed. I suppose,” cried the poor lady, with a deep sigh, “that on your deathbed you feel that you must tell everything. Oh, I’ve been silent, silent, so long! I feel that too. She is not a mother that it would ever be good for him to find. Mr. Bristow wished him never to come back to England, only for that. He said better be ignorant--better know nothing.” “And why was the poor mother so easily condemned?” “You would be shocked--you an unmarried lady--if I told you the story. She left him just after the boy was born. She fell from one degradation to another. He sent her money as long as he could keep any trace of her. Poor, poor man!” “And his friends took everything for gospel that this man said?” “He was an honest man. Why should he tell Mr. Bristow a lie? I said it was to be kept from poor Harry. It would only make him miserable. But there was no doubt about the truth of it--oh, none.” “I tell you,” cried Miss Bethune, “that there is every doubt of it. His mother was a poor deceived girl, that was abandoned, deserted, left to bear her misery as she could.” “Did you know his mother?” said the patient, showing out of the darkness the gleam of eyes widened by astonishment. “It does not matter,” cried Miss Bethune. “I know this, that the marriage was in secret, and the boy was born in secret; and while she was ill and weak there came the news of some one coming that might leave her penniless; and for the sake of the money, the wretched money, this man took the child up in his arms out of her very bed, and carried it away.” The sick woman clutched the arm of the other, who sat by her side, tragic and passionate, the words coming from her lips like sobs. “Oh, my poor lady,” she said, “if that is your story! But it was not that. My husband, Mr. Bristow, knew. He knew all about Gordon from the beginning. It was no secret to him. He did not take the child away till the mother had gone, till he had tried every way to find her, even to bring her back. He was a merciful man. I knew him too. Oh, poor woman, poor woman, my heart breaks for that other you knew. She is like me, she is worse off than me: but the one you know was not Harry’s mother--oh, no, no--Harry’s mother! If she is living it is--it is--in misery, and worse than misery.” “He said,” uttered a hoarse voice, breathless, out of the dimness, which nobody could have recognised for Miss Bethune’s, “that you said there was no such woman.”