“Your mother!” murmured the baronet, and kept eyeing him. “By Jove,” he said aloud, “your mother--! Who is your mother?” “As I told you, sir, my mother's name is Jane Tuke!” “Born Armour?” “Yes, sir.” “By heaven!” said the baronet to himself, “I see it all now! That terrible nurse was one of the family--and carried him away because she didn't like the look of my lady! Don't I wish I had had half her insight! Perhaps she was cousin to Robina--perhaps her own sister! Simon, the villain, will know all about it!” He sat silent for a moment. “Hm!--Now tell me, you young rascal,” he said, “why didn't you put in a claim for yourself instead of those confounded Mansons?” “Why should I, sir? I didn't want anything. I have all I desire--except a little more strength to work, and that is coming.” The baronet kept gazing at him with the strangest look on his wicked, handsome old face. “There is something you _should_ have asked me for!” he said at length, in a gentler tone. “What is that, sir?” “Your rights. You have a claim upon me before anyone else in the whole world!--I like you, too,” he went on in yet gentler tone, with a touch of mockery in it. Apparently he still hesitated to commit himself. “I must do something for you!” His son could contain himself no longer. “I would ask nothing, I would take nothing,” he said, as calmly as he could, though his voice trembled, and his heart throbbed with the beginnings of love, “from a man who had wronged my mother!” “Damn the rascal! I never wronged his mother!--Who said I wronged your mother, you scoundrel? I'll take my oath _she_ never did! Answer me directly who told you so!” His voice had risen to a roar of anger. His son could do the dead no wrong by speaking the truth. “Mrs. Manson told me,” he began, but was not allowed to finish the sentence. “Damned liar she always was!” cried the baronet--with such a fierceness in his growl as made Richard call to mind a certain bear in the Zoological gardens. “Then it was she that had you stolen! The beast ought to have died on the gallows, not in her bed! Ah, she was the one to plot, the snake! In this whole curse of a world, _she_ was the meanest devil I ever came across, and I've known more than a few!” “I know nothing about her, sir, except as the mother of Arthur, my schoolfellow. She seemed to hate me! She said I belonged to you, and had no right to be better off than her children!” “How did she know you?” “I can't tell, sir.” “You are like your mother, but the snake never can have set eyes on her!--Give me that cheque. Her fry shan't have a farthing! Let them rot alive with their dead dam!” He held out his hand: the second cheque lay on the table, and Richard had the former still in his possession. He did not move, nor did sir Wilton urge his demand.