"Mock if you will, for you will not mock long. Lady Mowbray had nothing whatever to do with this affair; moreover, Lady Mowbray was a stranger to your birth, sir!" This time the young nobleman recoiled in rage. "Listen to me," said Lebeau authoritatively. Esther was beginning to recover a vague consciousness. Athwart the shadows of her swoon thought began to reassert itself, though doubtful, timid, misty. Stretched upon the bed, incapable of movement, her eyes closed, she heard voices without comprehending what they said, without distinguishing the sense of what was spoken. "Twenty-three years ago," continued Lebeau, "two women were _enceintes_ at the same time, the wife and the mistress of Lord Mowbray, one at his residence in St. James's, the other in a chamber of his 'Folly' at Chelsea. The latter was the daughter of a London shop-keeper, whom Lord Mowbray had abducted from her family, and had concealed as his prisoner. It was Fate's decree that his lordship should be made a father twice in one and the same night. He called my attention to your vigor and vitality when you came into the world. 'Look, Lebeau,' he said to me, 'it is a genuine love-child. See how strong he is, while the other--' Then a thought occurred to him: why not substitute the illegitimate for the legitimate child? He hated his wife as he hated all things good and pure. The thought of rearing the child of a rival charmed him, and he considered me worthy to execute the change. It was I who bribed the young nobleman's nurse and placed you in his cradle. When your mother's health was re-established Lord Mowbray washed his hands of her and the child whom she believed hers. It was enough for him that the child should be dispossessed of his fortune and title; he desired that he should be wretched, deprived of everything. He knew that the family of his mistress, inflexible as they were in principles, would close their doors upon the fallen girl and her child. At rest upon this point, he forbade me to give the sufferers aid, and I disobeyed him." "That was the beginning of virtue!" "No, sir. I found her beautiful and provided for her. In my turn she made me a father, but I treated her as though I were a grand gentleman. I sank to the infamous level of Lord Mowbray. I exposed her to all the hazards and misery of a wandering life. She became an actress and travelled from country town to country town, with a troop of mediocre actors, dragging Lady Mowbray's son along with her, the child whose position and name you had usurped. She died--almost starving!" Lebeau pronounced these final words in a harsh tone of profound woe, upon which slowly accumulated remorse had set the tinge of indescribable bitterness. "My daughter," he continued after a pause, "I saved from this cruel existence, provided for her education, and placed her in the home of honest folk." "And the other,--the vagabond, my pretended brother?" Beneath Mowbray's apparent irony Lebeau detected his anxiety.