“Mrs. Goldstraw,” he said, “you are concealing something from me!”

The housekeeper obstinately repeated, “Please to favour me, sir, by saying whether you lunch, or dine, in the middle of the day?”

“I don’t know what I do in the middle of the day.  I can’t enter into my household affairs, Mrs. Goldstraw, till I know why you regret an act of kindness to my mother, which she always spoke of gratefully to the end of her life.  You are not doing me a service by your silence.  You are agitating me, you are alarming me, you are bringing on the singing in my head.”

His hand went up to his head again, and the pink in his face deepened by a shade or two.

“It’s hard, sir, on just entering your service,” said the housekeeper, “to say what may cost me the loss of your good will.  Please to remember, end how it may, that I only speak because you have insisted on my speaking, and because I see that I am alarming you by my silence.  When I told the poor lady, whose portrait you have got there, the name by which her infant was christened in the Foundling, I allowed myself to forget my duty, and dreadful consequences, I am afraid, have followed from it.  I’ll tell you the truth, as plainly as I can.  A few months from the time when I had informed the lady of her baby’s name, there came to our institution in the country another lady (a stranger), whose object was to adopt one of our children.  She brought the needful permission with her, and after looking at a great many of the children, without being able to make up her mind, she took a sudden fancy to one of the babies—­a boy—­under my care.  Try, pray try, to compose yourself, sir!  It’s no use disguising it any longer.  The child the stranger took away was the child of that lady whose portrait hangs there!”

Mr. Wilding started to his feet.  “Impossible!” he cried out, vehemently.  “What are you talking about?  What absurd story are you telling me now?  There’s her portrait!  Haven’t I told you so already?  The portrait of my mother!”

“When that unhappy lady removed you from the Foundling, in after years,” said Mrs. Goldstraw, gently, “she was the victim, and you were the victim, sir, of a dreadful mistake.”

He dropped back into his chair.  “The room goes round with me,” he said.  “My head! my head!” The housekeeper rose in alarm, and opened the windows.  Before she could get to the door to call for help, a sudden burst of tears relieved the oppression which had at first almost appeared to threaten his life.  He signed entreatingly to Mrs. Goldstraw not to leave him.  She waited until the paroxysm of weeping had worn itself out.  He raised his head as he recovered himself, and looked at her with the angry unreasoning suspicion of a weak man.

“Mistake?” he said, wildly repeating her last word.  “How do I know you are not mistaken yourself?”

“There is no hope that I am mistaken, sir.  I will tell you why, when you are better fit to hear it.”