Then Bayne saw with dismay what he had done, and began to falter out expressions of regret.  She paid no attention.

He begged her to let him fetch her some salts or a cordial.

She shook her head and lay weak as water and white as a sheet.

At last she rose, and, supporting herself for a moment by the back of the chair, she said, “you will take me to see my son’s remains.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t think of it!”

“I must; I cannot keep away from them an instant.  And how else can I know they are his?  Do you think I will believe any eye but my own?  Come.”

He had no power to disobey her.  He trembled in every limb at what was coming, but he handed her into her carriage, and went with her to the Town Hall.

When they brought her the tweed sleeves, she trembled like an aspen leaf.  When they brought her the glass receptacle, she seized Bayne by the shoulder and turned her head away.  By degrees she looked round, and seemed to stiffen all of a sudden.  “It is not my son,” said she.

She rushed out of the place, bade Mr. Bayne good-morning, and drove directly to Dr. Amboyne.  She attacked him at once.  “You have been deceiving me all this time about my son; and what am I the better?  What is anybody the better?  Now tell me the truth.  You think him dead?”

(Dr. Amboyne hung his head in alarm and confusion.)

“Why do you think so?  Do you go by those remains?  I have seen them.  My child was vaccinated on the left arm, and carried the mark.  He had specks on two of his finger-nails; he had a small wart on his little finger; and his fingers were not blunt and uncouth, like that; they were as taper as any lady’s in England; that hand is nothing like my son’s; you are all blind; yet you must go and blind the only one who had eyes, the only one who really loved him, and whose opinion is worth a straw.”

Dr. Amboyne was too delighted at the news to feel these reproaches very deeply.  “Thank God!” said he.  “Scold me, for I deserve it.  But I did for the best; but, unfortunately, we have still to account for his writing to no one all this time.  No matter.  I begin to hope.  That was the worst evidence.  Edith, I must go to Woodbine Villa.  That poor girl must not marry in ignorance of this.  Believe me, she will never marry Coventry, if he is alive.  Excuse my leaving you at such a time, but there is not a moment to be lost.”

He placed her on a sofa, and opened the window; for, by a natural reaction, she was beginning to feel rather faint.  He gave his housekeeper strict orders to take care of her, then snatching his hat, went hastily out.

At the door he met the footman with several letters (he had a large correspondence), shoved them pell-mell into his breast-pocket, shouted to a cabman stationed near, and drove off to Woodbine Villa.

It was rather up-hill, but he put his head out of the window and offered the driver a sovereign to go fast.  The man lashed his horse up the hill, and did go very fast, though it seemed slow to Dr. Amboyne, because his wishes flew so much faster.