“A proud creatur’ was my gal--Georgie was always proud above her station. She held herself aloof from the common sort, she did. Not that such beauties oughtn’t to command the best. But she made her mistake--there, I’ll own to it. It was all from her turning religious and trying to reform people, the deuce take her. And she’d have been left to suffer the consequences to this day if it hadn’t a’ been for me--a good mother though I say it, the devil and the deuce.” “Old mother,” I said quietly, seeing that for some reason she hailed the term, “who was it helped her to that mistake? Tell me his name, and I’ll give you money.” She paused suddenly in her sibilations. Her old face leered up at me with infinite acrimony. “How much?” she snapped. “But, there--I dursen’t--it’s no bid.” Something, some chord of ancient memory in me, tightened and quivered. “My God!” I cried. “I remember now. It was you that had the care of me when I was a baby!” “Ah!” she piped. “It was me, was it, Richard? And to think you should have growed to this, and all the understanding in you!” “Wasn’t it you, I say?” “You may say it with truth, dovey,” she answered. “She wanted me to adopt you altogether, did my daughter; but I just struck when I found I wasn’t to be included in her ladyship’s promotion. But I made her pay for it, I did--more than if I’d kept you; and then she and Pugsley had to put their deuced heads together, and account for you to his lordship in their own way.” “Yes,” I said. “I know that.” “You know it?” She lowered her frowzy noddle, mumbling to herself; then looked up fulsomely. “Tell old Mother Carey, my pretty,” she coaxed, “just exactly how much you _do_ know.” “That you were on the stage----” I began. “Ah!” she leered across at the photographs on the wall; her horrible old feet drummed on the floor. “The stage, to be sure! My daughter could never come anigh me as a dancer--no, nor in looks, for that matter. There’s nothing criminal in being on the stage, ducky dear; and Georgie herself was born in wedlock.” “That Lady Skene was taken from the boards by her husband,” I went on; but she interrupted me: “There you’re wrong. It was Pugsley rescued her, as he called it, when she’d returned to them after your little affair, and who trimmed her up and made her meat for his lordship.” “That you bought me my name of a publican--his name--for a pint of beer,” I continued. She admitted that frankly, with a giggle. “You had to have one, you know, deary. And to give you your mother’s might have let out things. And hasn’t this fine lordship, now, ever shown any curiosity about who was your father?” “No,” I said. “The curiosity is all mine. Who was he?” “_I_ don’t know,” she proclaimed blankly, and at once. “You do,” I said sternly.