“I’d got a big, very poor practice then and was too busy, anyway, to look up old friends. Then one day he turned up, half demented, and told me she’d gone off with Draycott and left him with their small boy on his hands. To make a long story short, he ended by divorcing her after trying in vain to get her back. I went to see her myself, much as I disliked her, the day after Baxter’s visit to me. I found her at a hotel with Draycott and she laughed in my face when I tried to get her to return to her husband. After the divorce he went to pieces altogether and I had my hands full, I can tell you. When he got past work I persuaded him to come to me with the boy, and he died soon afterwards in my house. I’d got fond of the little chap by then, and I stuck to him, there being no other relations he could go to. He’s at a preparatory school now and going to a public school next term. That’s the principal reason why I didn’t want my connection with this business to come out. I gave him my name and he’s supposed to be my nephew and, for his sake, I don’t want to drag up the past now.” “I see that,” said Fayre sympathetically. “In fact, I’m beginning to realize now how you must have cursed my interference.” “Your butting in as you did was a calamity, from my point of view, and, like a fool, I lost my temper and tried to bluff it out. You see, I’d concealed his identity with a good deal of care and I began to see myself in the witness-box and photographs of the little chap in the papers, all my trouble gone for nothing, as it were, and I saw red.” “Does the boy know he’s Baxter’s son?”