‘Cane the d——­d painter, of course,’ said Sleaford, opening his great blue eyes in wonder that such a question should be asked.  ‘Awfully bad form that fellow goin’ and puttin’ your mother in the picture.  But that’s just the way with these fellows.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked again.

‘What do I mean?  The paintin’ and writin’ fellows.  You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, as I’ve often and often said to Cyril Aylwin; and by Jove, I’m right for once.  I suppose I needn’t ask you if you’re going back to cane him.’

‘Wilderspin did what he did quite unconsciously,’ I replied, as I hailed a hansom.  ‘It was the finger of God.’

‘The finger of—­Oh come!  That be hanged, old chap.’

‘Good-bye,’ I said, as I jumped into the hansom.

‘But you don’t mean to say you are goin’ to let a man put your mother into—­’

I heard no more.  The terrible idea which had been growing in my brain, shaping itself out of a nebulous mass of reminiscences of what had just occurred at the studio, was now stinging me to madness.  Wilderspin’s extreme dejection, the strange way in which he had seemed inclined to evade answering my question as to the safety of Winifred, the look of pity on his face as at last he answered ’quite safe’—­what did all these indications portend?  At every second the thought grew and grew, till my brain seemed like a vapour of fire, and my eyeballs seemed to scorch their sockets as I cried aloud:  ‘Have I found her at last to lose her?’

On reaching the studio door I rapped:  before the servant had time to answer my summons, I rapped again till the sounds echoed along the street.  When my summons was answered, I rushed upstairs.  Wilderspin stood at the studio door, listening, apparently, to the sound of the blacksmith’s anvil coming in from the back of Maud Street through the open window.  Though his sorrowful face told all, I cried out, ‘Wilderspin, she’s safe?  You said she was safe?’

‘My friend,’ said Wilderspin solemnly, ’the news I have to give you is news that I knew you would rather receive when you could hear it alone.’

‘You said she was safe!’

’Yes, safe indeed!  She whom you, under some strange but no doubt beneficent hallucination, believe to be the lady you lost in Wales, is safe indeed, for she is in the spirit-land with her whose blessing lent her to me—­she has returned to her who was once a female blacksmith at Oldhill, and is now the brightest, sweetest, purest saint in Paradise.’

Dead!  My soul had been waiting for the word—­expecting it ever since I left the studio with my mother—­but now it sounded more dreadful than if it had come as a surprise.

‘Tell me all,’ I cried, ’at once—­at once.  She did not return, you say, on the day following the catastrophe—­when did she return?—­when did you next see her?’

‘I never saw her again alive,’ answered Wilderspin mournfully; ’but you are so pale, Mr. Aylwin, and your eyes are so wild, I had better defer telling you what little more there is to tell until you have quite recovered from the shock.’