“Herein Mrs. Yule’s prophecy proved to be correct. Old Bloggs did die very soon, and his son was duly adopted by the rich and eccentric old lady, sent to a good school, and finally given a berth in the Union Bank. “I saw young Bloggs—it is not a euphonious name, is it?—at that memorable inquest later on. He was very young and unassuming, and used to keep very much out of the way of Mrs. Yule’s friends, who, mind you, strongly disapproved of his presence in the rich old widow’s house, to the detriment of the only legitimate son and heir. “What happened within the intimate and close circle of 9, Dartmoor Terrace, during the next three years of course nobody can tell. Certain it is that by the time young Bloggs was nearing his twenty-first birthday, he had become the very apple of his adopted mother’s eye. “During those three years Mr. Statham and other old friends had worked hard in the interests of William Yule. Every one felt that the latter was being very badly treated indeed. He had studied painting in his younger days, and now had set up a small studio in Hampstead, and was making perhaps a couple of hundred or so a year, and that, with much difficulty, whilst the gardener’s son had supplanted him in his mother’s affections, and, worse still, in his mother’s purse. “The old lady was more obdurate than ever. In deference to the strong feelings of her friends she had agreed to see her son occasionally, and William Yule would call upon his mother from time to time—in the middle of the day when Bloggs was out of the way at the Bank—stay to tea, and part from her in frigid, though otherwise amicable, terms. “‘I have no ill-feeling against my son,’ the old lady would say, ‘but when he married against my wishes, he became a stranger to me—that is all—a stranger, however, whose pleasant acquaintanceship I am pleased to keep up.’ “That the old lady meant to carry her eccentricities in this respect to the bitter end, became all the more evident when she sent for her old friend and lawyer, Mr. Statham, and explained to him that she wished to make over to young Bloggs the whole of her property by deed of gift, during her lifetime—on condition that on his twenty-first birthday he legally took up the name of Yule. “Mr. Statham subsequently made public, as you know, the whole of this interview which he had with Mrs. Yule. “‘I tried to dissuade her, of course,’ he said, ‘for I thought it so terribly unfair on William Yule and his children. Moreover, I had always hoped that when Mrs. Yule grew older and more feeble she would surely relent towards her only son. But she was terribly obstinate.’