"How am I to tell? You must ask some one else." "And who was the Lady Woodroffe who came to the hotel?" "How do I know? You must ask some one else." "Oh!" He might have considered this attitude as possible at least. But he had not. His face expressed bewilderment and surprise. "You actually suggest to me--to _me_, of all people in the world!--that I, actually I myself, a woman of my position, bought a child in place of a dead child! That is your meaning, is it not, sir?" "Certainly it is," he answered with creditable valour. "I know you did it! There's no way out of it but to confess!" "Why, you miserable little counter-jumper!" Dick stepped back in some alarm, because it looked as if she were going to box his ears. She was quite capable of it, indeed, and but for the guilty conscience that held her back, she would have done it. As it was, her wrath was not feigned. It maddened her to think that this man should so easily discover a whole half of the thing she thought concealed for ever. "You wretched little counter-jumper!" she repeated, with reginal gesture, tall and commanding--taller than poor Richard, and, dear me! how much more commanding! "And you pretend a trumpery resemblance! Why, my son is half a foot taller than you! My son's father was a gentleman, and his face and manners show it. Yours---- But your face and manners show what he was. Leave the house, sir!" Dick dropped his hat in his surprise. "If you think to black-mail me, you are mistaken. Leave the house! If you dare to speak of this again, it shall be to my lawyers." Richard picked up his hat. The action is a trifle, but it completed his discomfiture. "No; stay a moment. Understand quite clearly, that you can make any use of these entries that you please. But you may as well understand that I have never been in Birmingham in my life; that persons in my position act and move among a surrounding troop of servants, to speak nothing of friends and relations. That the heirs of persons like Sir Humphrey do not die and get buried unknown to their friends--perhaps you have not thought of all this." He heard this statement with open mouth. He was struck dumb. "Understand at once, make your principal--who is she? the rich person--understand that I have never been in Birmingham in my life; and that every hour of my life can be accounted for." "Who was that child, then?" "Find out, if you can. It has nothing to do with me. If, twenty years ago, some woman chose, for purposes of her own, to personate the wife of Sir Humphrey--who was then in Scotland--while Sir Humphrey was on his way home from India, do you think I am going to inquire or trouble my head about her impudence?" Richard murmured something indistinct. He did not know what to say. How could this majestic woman have done such a thing? Yet who else could have done it?