“Well, boy, she had been living in London for more than three years, hidden in the same big jungle which sheltered me, and Providence had never sent me across her path. She had been living as many such lonely creatures do live in London; managing to exist somehow--now by means of one starvation work, now another. I went home with her, and we gathered her few pitiful possessions together, and carried them and you away with us in a cab, and--you know the rest. She lived with me until you were old enough to be in danger of suffering from a bad example; and then she made some excuse for leaving me--poor innocent soul, she was afraid lest dissolute Daniel should contaminate her pet-lamb. In all the time that we were together, I forbore to question her; I always believed that she would confide in me sooner or later, and I waited patiently in that hope. She told me once that she had made two journeys to Bayham--the first while her father and mother were still alive, and that she had waited and watched, under cover of the winter evening darkness, until she had contrived to see them both; the second when they were lying in the parish churchyard. This was all she ever told me. I asked her one day if she would tell me the name of your father. But she looked at me with a sad, frightened face, poor child, and said No, she could never tell me that; he was away from England--at the other end of the world, she believed. This was the only attempt I ever made to penetrate the secret of your birth.” “The letters--the man’s letters--are full of allusions to an intended marriage. Do you think there was no marriage?” “I am sure there was none.” Eustace groaned aloud. For a long time he had suspected as much as this; but to hear his suspicions confirmed by the opinion of another was none the less bitter. “You have some reason for saying as much, Uncle Dan?” he asked, presently. “I have this reason, Eustace: if my sister could have come back to Bayham, she would have come. The sorrow must have been a very bitter one which kept her away from her father and mother.” The young man made no reply to his uncle. He walked to the window, and looked out at the dreary street, where the perpetual organ-grinder, who seems to grind all our sorrows in a musical mill, was grinding on at the usual pace. For the common world the thing which he played was an Ethiopian melody; but Eustace never afterwards heard the simple air without recalling this miserable hour, and the story of his mother’s luckless life. He came back to his kinsman. Heaven pity him, the law denied him even this human tie, and it was only by courtesy he could call this man his uncle. He came away from the window, and flung himself on honest Daniel’s breast and sobbed aloud. “And now take me to my mother’s grave,” he said presently. CHAPTER IV. UN MENAGE A DEUX.