Was this a man to betray an innocent girl, and bring disgrace upon an honest yeoman’s household? Before leaving Seacomb next morning Mr. Clissold went to the parish church, looked once more at the register in which he had seen the baptism of Matthew Elgood’s daughter; and afterwards referred to the register of burials to assure himself of the child’s death. There was the entry: ‘Emily Jane, daughter of Matthew Elgood, comedian, and Jane Elgood, his wife, aged five weeks. January 4th, 1849.’ Just six days before the closing of the Seacomb Theatre. Maurice distinctly remembered Justina having told him once, in the course of their somewhat discursive talk, that her birthday was in March, and that she had completed her nineteenth year on her last anniversary. Now, if Mrs. Elgood had had a daughter born in the December of 1848, it was not possible for her to have been the mother of Justina, if Justina was born in the March of 1849. He had now no shadow of doubt that Matthew Elgood, who had left Seacomb in February in the midst of frost and snow, was the same man who had sought shelter at Borcel End, and who had called himself Eden. A false pride had doubtless induced the penniless stroller to hide his poverty under an assumed name. ‘The plainest, most straightforward way of doing things will be to tax Elgood himself with the fact,’ thought Maurice. ‘Once sure of my darling’s identity with Muriel’s daughter, my next duty shall be to discover the evidence of her mother’s marriage. And if I succeed in doing that——? Well, I suppose the next thing will be for some clever lawyers to prove her right to the Penwyn estate, and Churchill Penwyn and his wife will be ruined, and Justina will be a great heiress, and I shall retire into the background. Hardly a pleasant picture of the future, that. Perhaps it would have been wiser, from a purely selfish point of view, to have left my dear girl Justina Elgood to the end of the chapter—or at least till I persuaded her to exchange that spurious surname for the good old name of Clissold. But now having gone so far, won the confidence of a dying woman, sworn to set right an old wrong, I am in honour bound to go on, not to the ultimate issue, perhaps, but at any rate to the assertion of my darling girl’s legitimacy.’ He rejoiced in the swiftness of the express which carried him homewards, by stubble fields, and yellowing woods, rejoiced at the thought that he should be in time to see Justina, were it only one half-hour before she went to the theatre. He took a hansom and drove straight to Hudspeth Street, told the man to wait, and left his portmanteau and travelling bag in the cab while he ran upstairs to the second floor sitting-room. Matthew Elgood was enjoying his afternoon siesta, his amiable countenance shrouded from the autumnal fly by a crimson silk handkerchief. Justina was sitting at a little table by the window, reading.