‘Indeed; then whatever hope you may entertain of future profit from this discovery is a recent hope, and has had no influence in the matter of your regard for this young lady?’ ‘None whatever. I do not pretend to be superior to human nature in general, but I think I may safely say that there are few men who set less value on money, in the abstract, than I do. But whatever portion my wife may be entitled to receive I am ready to fight for, and to fight still more resolutely for the name which she is entitled to bear.’ ‘But granted that the marriage which I hear of for the first time to-day did actually take place, what is to prove to any legal mind that this young lady whom you put forward is the issue of that marriage?’ Yes, as Ferdinand Sivewright had said, here was the weakness of the case. Lucius now for the first time perceived that he ought to have secured the dying man’s deposition of the facts concerning Lucille. But, standing by that bed of pain, he had hardly been in a condition to consider the case from the lawyer’s standpoint. He had forgotten that Sivewright’s statement was but fleeting breath, and that this single witness of the truth was swiftly passing beyond the jurisdiction of earthly tribunals. ‘For that we must rely on circumstantial evidence,’ he said after a longish pause. ‘The woman who nursed Lucille Glenlyne may be still alive.’ ‘How old was the child when this nurse left her?’ ‘About four, I believe.’ ‘You believe!’ echoed Mr. Pullman contemptuously. ‘Before you approached me upon such a subject as this, Mr. Davoren, you might at least have taken the trouble to be certain about your facts. You believe that the child was about four years old when her nurse left her, and you rely upon this nurse, who may or may not be living, to identify the four-year-old child she nursed in the young lady of nineteen whom you put forward.’ ‘You are somewhat hard upon me, Mr. Pullman.’ ‘Sir,’ said the lawyer, with a Johnsonian air, ‘I abhor chimeras.’ ‘I do not, however, despair of making Miss Glenlyne’s identity clear even to your legal mind. As I have told you, Mr. and Mrs. Glenlyne occupied a cottage near Sidmouth for the few years of their wedded life. The little girl was born there, nursed there, and conveyed straight from that cottage to the house in Bond-street, where she was brought up in the care of old Mr. Sivewright. Now the date of her removal from Sidmouth will fit into the date of her arrival in Bond-street, to which Mr. Sivewright can testify; and it will go hard if we cannot find people in Sidmouth—servants, tradesmen, the landlord of the cottage—who will remember the child’s abrupt removal and be able to swear to the date.’ ‘Able to swear,’ exclaimed Mr. Pullman, again contemptuous. ‘What fact is there so incredible that legions of unimpeachable witnesses will not sustain it by their testimony? You mentioned the name of Sivewright just now. Is the person you spoke of one Ferdinand Sivewright?’