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‘Yes, I know.’

‘Well!—Just then this girl’s mother came to Bellendean—all by herself, going north, it was thought. She was going to have a baby——’ The old Colonel here fell a trembling, and his wife took his hands and held them in her own, caressing them—two large brown tremulous hands—between her small white nervous ones. He leant back on her shoulder too, which was not half broad enough to support him. ‘The short and the long is this: she had her baby, and she died. And the baby is Joyce—named after her mother; and there are clothes and letters to prove who she was——’

‘My poor Henry! God help you, my dear! You have seen them? it was—she?’

‘No—I haven’t seen them. I hadn’t the courage. I could think of nothing but you. You’ll do it for me, Elizabeth? you’ll see what you think. I—I couldn’t look up the old things. I—couldn’t—decide—I couldn’t——’

He could do nothing but tremble, it seemed, and falter out these broken words, and lean back upon her, the colour going out of his face. She thought he was about to faint.