Richard hesitated. He did not want sir Wilton to know who he was. He felt that, the relation between them known by both, he must behave to his father in a way he would not like. But he must, nevertheless, speak the truth! Wherever he had not spoken the truth, he had repented, and been ashamed, and had now come to see that to tell a lie was to step out of the march of the ages led by the great will. “Her name, sir, was Armour,” he said. “Hey!” cried the baronet with a start. Yet he had all but expected it. “Yes, sir,--Jane Armour.” “Jane!” said his father with an accent of scorn. “--Not a bit of it!--_Jane_!” he repeated, and muttered to himself--“What motive could there be for misinforming the boy as to the _Christian_ name of his mother?” For, the moment he saw the youth again, the spell was upon him afresh, and he felt all but certain he was his own. Richard stood perplexed. Sir Wilton had taken his mother's name oddly for any supposition. He had said Mrs. Manson was a liar: might not her assertion of a relation between them be as groundless as it was spiteful? He had at once acknowledged the Mansons, but showed no recognition of himself on hearing his mother's name? There might be nothing in Mrs. Manson's story; he might after all be the son of John as well as of Jane Tuke! Only, alas, then, Alice and Arthur would not be his sister and brother! They would be God's children all the same, though, and he God's child! they would still be his brother and sister, to love and to keep. “Here, put your name on the back there,” said the baronet, having blotted the cheque. “I have made it payable to your order, and without your name it is worth nothing.” “It will be safer to endorse it at the bank, sir,” returned Richard. “I see you know what you're about!” grinned sir Wilton--saying to himself, however, “The rascal will be too many for me!--But,” he continued, “I see too you don't know how to sign your own name! I had better alter it to _bearer_, with my initials! Damn it! your paltry cheque has given me more trouble than if it had been for ten thousand! Sit down there, will you, and write your name on that sheet of paper.” Richard knew the story of Talleyrand--how, giving his autograph to a lady, he wrote it at the top left-hand corner of the sheet, so that she could write above or before it, neither an order for money nor a promise of marriage: yielding to an absurd impulse, he did the same. The baronet burst into loud laughter, which, however, ceased abruptly: he had not gained his end! “What comical duck-fists you've got!” he cried, risking the throw. “I once knew a man whose fingers and toes too were tied together that way! He swam like a duck!” “My feet are more that way than my hands,” replied Richard. “Only _some_ of my fingers have got the web between them. My mother made me promise to put up with the monstrosity till I came of age. She seemed to think some luck lay in it.”