“Eh!” she wondered. “So this is my Georgie’s child, is it, the deuce? And how does your mammy treat you, my pretty?” “Lady Skene has got another son now,” I said. “Didn’t you know it?” “I hear nothing, and I know nothing in these days, dovey the devil,” she answered. “So long as I’m given my little provision as her mother, Georgie’s welcome to make out her own life as she pleases for me. We usen’t to get on very well together, not always, her and me. She’d come to me in her troubles, she would, like her father’s own gal; but most times we lived apart.” “She came to you when she was in trouble about me, I suppose?” I said. She conned me a little, unanswering. The wintry pupils of her eyes seemed to sharpen like a cat’s. “Not she--a married woman,” she protested cunningly. “She was not married before she married Lord Skene,” I said. “I was born to her out of wedlock, and he was not allowed to know it.” Again she was silent, panting a little; and suddenly she was seized with a second paroxysm of coughing. “O dear! O dear!” she gasped, when she could speak. “O, the deuce and all! O, my lungs are like emery paper, and the joints of my bones gone scroopy. O, get me a chair, ducky, get me a chair! I’m all wore out with pain, I am, and I sha’n’t trouble anyone much longer. There, I shall be better in a minute--I can feel it passing. O the deuce and the devil!” I helped her to seat herself, and stood over her while she recovered. When she did at length, she went on ejaculating, “O, the deuce and the devil!” in spasmodic whispers, until her speech found breath for further irrelevancies: “Welcome to live as she likes for me O, the deuce and all!--in her fine castle, my pretty--so long as I’m left undisturbed in my little ’ouse--in my little O the devil ducky!” I waited for the stream to run out, and then spoke again. “Lord Skene was not allowed to know it, I say.” She answered me, without looking up. “I was no party to that, my dovey the deuce. I swear I wasn’t O, the devil! It was all Pugsley’s doing, the deuce and the devil take him!” “Was it he, too,” I said, “who christened me out of a pint pot? You see I’ve found out something, old mother.” She rocked to and fro--in a sort of obscene secret laughter, I could have fancied. It was as much as I could do to keep my wits steadily to the point at issue. In all the sure success of my pursuit, I had never foreseen any end to it like this, or even approaching it. “Just like him,” she muttered. “He always called me that, a deuced providence.” “Who called you?” I demanded sternly. “Who are you talking about?” She wiped, or rather smeared her eyes with her sleeve. The old life in her, I believed, was foundering between craft and senility; but the ancient habit still predominated. Once more she spoke, and again away from the point.