“Well:  I took down the address and the next day I came there with the concierge of the hotel where we were staying, and under his protection we went upstairs.  My! it was a beastly place—­and your poor father—­for he was your father—­was tossing about and raving, with burning cheeks and huge eyes, just like yours.  Well!  I had plenty of money just then, so with the help of that concierge we found a decent lodging—­they wasn’t so partic’lar then about infection or they didn’t think typhoid infectious—­I took him there in an ambulance, engaged a nurse, and in a fortnight he was recovering.  He turned out to be a seminarist—­I think they called it—­from Ireland who was going to be trained for the priesthood at Louvain—­lots of Irish used to come there in those days.  And somehow a fit of naughtiness had overcome him—­he was only twenty—­and he thought he’d like to see a bit of the world.  So he’d sloped from his college and had a bit of a spree at Brussels and Ostende.  Then he was took with this fever—­

“His name was Fergus O’Conor and he always said he was descended from the real old Irish Kings, and he was some kind of a Fenian.  I mean he used to go on something terrible against the English, and say he would never rest till they were drove out of Ireland.  When he got well again he was that handsome—­well I’ve never seen any one like him, unless it’s you.  I expect when you dress up as David Williams you’re the image of what he was when I fell in love with him.

“And I did.  And when me barrister friend—­Mr. FitzSimmons—­teased me about it, and wanted me—­he having finished his business—­to return with him to London I refused.  Bein’ a bit free with me speech in those days I dessay I said ‘Go to Hell.’  But he only laughed and left me fifty pounds.

“Well, I lived with this young student for a matter of six months.  A lovely time we had, till he began gettin’ melancholy—­matter of no money partly.  He tried bein’ a journalist.

“Then the Church got him back.  There came about a reg’lar change in him, and just at the time when you was comin’ along.  He woke up one night in a cold sweat and said he was eternally damned.  ‘Nonsense,’ I says, ’it’s them crayfish; you ought never to eat that bisque soup...’

“But he meant it.  He went back to Louvain—­where I’m goin’ to take you in a day or two—­and I suppose they made him do all sorts of penances before they gave him absolution.  But he stuck to it.  In due time he became a priest and entered one of them religious houses.  They think a lot of him at Louvain.  I’ve seen him once or twice but I can’t bear to meet his eyes—­they’re somethin’ like yours—­make me feel a reg’lar Jezebel.  And as to you?  Well, when he left me I hadn’t got much money left; so, before I begged a passage back to England, I called in at the very hotel where you found me the other day, and where me an’ my barrister friend had been stayin’.  I’d got to know the