He paused a moment, brooding in his fat, melancholy way on the pattern of the carpet between his feet. Sir Robert, with a face hard and proud, sat upright, listening to the tale of his misfortunes—and doubtless suffered torments as he listened. “Her story,” Wetherell resumed—possibly he had been arranging his thoughts—“is this. Lady Vermuyden was living a life of the wildest gaiety. She had no affection for the child; if the woman is to be believed, she hated it. To part with it was nothing to her one way or the other, and on receipt of Sir Robert’s order to return, her ladyship conceived the idea of punishing him by abducting the child and telling him it was dead. She set out from Florence with it; on the way she left it at Orvieto in charge of the Italian nurse, and arriving in Rome she put about the story of its death. Shortly afterwards she had it carried to England and bred up in an establishment near London—always with the aid and connivance of her maid.” “The maid’s name?” Vaughan asked. “Herapath—Martha Herapath. But to proceed. By and by Lady Vermuyden returned to England, and settled at Brighton, and the maid left her and married, but continued to draw a pension from her. Lady Vermuyden persisted here—in the company of Lady Conyng—but I need name no names—in the same course of giddiness, if no worse, which she had pursued abroad; and gave little if any heed to the child. But this woman Herapath never forgot that the pension she enjoyed was dependent on her power to prove the truth: and when a short time back the girl, now well-grown, was withdrawn from her knowledge, she grew restive. She sought Lady Vermuyden, always a creature of impulse, and when her ladyship, foolish in this as in all things, refused to meet her views she—she came to us,” he continued, lifting his head abruptly and looking at Vaughan, “and told us the story.” “It will have to be proved,” Vaughan said stubbornly. “No doubt, strictly proved,” Wetherell replied. “In the meantime if you would like to peruse the facts in greater detail, they are here, as taken down from the woman’s mouth.” He drew from his capacious breast-pocket a manuscript consisting of several sheets which he unfolded and flattened on his knee. He handed it to Vaughan.