We do not know, but conjectures have been hazarded. Mr. Cuming Walters thinks that the opium woman’s hatred of Jasper may be due to the fact that Jasper has wronged a child of the woman’s. He also conjectures that Jasper may be the son of the opium woman. Dr. Jackson conjectures that Jasper seduces a young girl who had treated the old woman kindly, that he neglected this girl for Rosa, that the girl committed suicide, and that the old woman devoted herself to the pursuit of the betrayer. All this is mere speculation. We have really no means of judging whether the speculation is true or not. It does seem that the woman’s peculiar hatred of Jasper must have an origin and a grave cause. Miss Stoddart suggests that the opium woman was not wholly degraded, and that she is horrified by Jasper’s continually repeated threatenings while under the influence of opium; that her sympathies have been wakened for that hapless Ned who bears a threatened name, and she resolves to do her best to serve him. With an honest purpose she makes her way before Christmas to Cloisterham. She loses sight of Jasper, but actually meets Edwin Drood. The kind act of that young stranger causes her to unload her conscience, and she bids him be thankful that his name is not Ned. At her second visit in the summer she knows from Jasper’s confessions under her own roof that the long premeditated crime has actually taken place, and her object in visiting Cloisterham is to gather evidence that may serve the ends of justice. This sunken creature has a task assigned to her, and she fulfils it. I am not sure that Dickens means to throw any redeeming light on the character of the opium woman. She has been wronged; she is seeking vengeance, and at last, she finds it. How this comes to pass Dickens meant to tell us, but he meant, no doubt, to surprise us in the telling. My own belief is that Dickens intended to surprise his readers by telling them of some unsuspected blood relationship between his characters. Surprises of this kind are given in his novels. No reader of _Oliver Twist_ could have guessed from the first part Oliver’s relationship to Monks and the Maylies. Who would have supposed from the first half of _Nicholas Nickleby_ that Smike was the son of Ralph? ‘That, boy,’ repeated Ralph, looking vacantly at him. ‘Whom I saw stretched dead and cold upon his bed, and who is now in his grave—’ ‘Who is now in his grave,’ echoed Ralph, like one who talks in his sleep. The man raised his eyes, and clasped his hands solemnly together: ‘—Was your only son, so help me God in heaven!’ In the midst of a dead silence Ralph sat down, pressing his two hands upon his temples. He removed them after a minute, and never was there seen, part of a living man undisfigured by any wound, such a ghastly face as he then disclosed.