Left alone, I drew my chair to the window; and looked out with a beating heart at the guilty house.  I waited and waited through what appeared to me to be an endless time, until I heard the wheels of a cab stop at the end of the street.  I looked in that direction, and saw Trottle get out of the cab alone, walk up to the house, and knock at the door.  He was let in by Barsham’s mother.  A minute or two later, a decently-dressed man sauntered past the house, looked up at it for a moment, and sauntered on to the corner of the street close by.  Here he leant against the post, and lighted a cigar, and stopped there smoking in an idle way, but keeping his face always turned in the direction of the house-door.

I waited and waited still.  I waited and waited, with my eyes riveted to the door of the house.  At last I thought I saw it open in the dusk, and then felt sure I heard it shut again softly.  Though I tried hard to compose myself, I trembled so that I was obliged to call for Peggy to help me on with my bonnet and cloak, and was forced to take her arm to lean on, in crossing the street.

Trottle opened the door to us, before we could knock.  Peggy went back, and I went in.  He had a lighted candle in his hand.

“It has happened, ma’am, as I thought it would,” he whispered, leading me into the bare, comfortless, empty parlour.  “Barsham and his mother have consulted their own interests, and have come to terms.  My guess-work is guess-work no longer.  It is now what I felt it was—­Truth!”

Something strange to me—­something which women who are mothers must often know—­trembled suddenly in my heart, and brought the warm tears of my youthful days thronging back into my eyes.  I took my faithful old servant by the hand, and asked him to let me see Mrs. Kirkland’s child, for his mother’s sake.

“If you desire it, ma’am,” said Trottle, with a gentleness of manner that I had never noticed in him before.  “But pray don’t think me wanting in duty and right feeling, if I beg you to try and wait a little.  You are agitated already, and a first meeting with the child will not help to make you so calm, as you would wish to be, if Mr. Forley’s messenger comes.  The little boy is safe up-stairs.  Pray think first of trying to compose yourself for a meeting with a stranger; and believe me you shall not leave the house afterwards without the child.”

I felt that Trottle was right, and sat down as patiently as I could in a chair he had thoughtfully placed ready for me.  I was so horrified at the discovery of my own relation’s wickedness that when Trottle proposed to make me acquainted with the confession wrung from Barsham and his mother, I begged him to spare me all details, and only to tell me what was necessary about George Forley.