That was not a pleasant meeting with his friend Mrs. Clover.  To describe all that had happened yesterday would have taxed his powers at any time; at eight-thirty a.m. on the first of January, his head aching and his stomach ill at ease, he was not likely to achieve much in the way of lucid narrative.  Mrs. Clover regarded him with a severe look.  His manifest black eye, and an unwonted slovenliness of appearance, could not but suggest that he had taken leave of the bygone year in a too fervid spirit.  His explanations she found difficulty in believing, but the upshot of it all—­the fact that her husband lay at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital—­seemed beyond doubt, and this it was that mainly concerned her.

“I shall go at once,” she said in a hard tone, turning her face from him.

“But there’s something else I must tell you,” pursued Gammon, with much awkwardness.  “You don’t know—­who to ask for.”

The woman’s eyes, even now not in their depths unkindly, searched him with a startled expression.

“I suppose I shall ask for Mr. Clover?”

“They wouldn’t know who you meant.  That isn’t his real name.”

A cry escaped her; she turned pale.

“Not his real name?  I thought it—­I was afraid of that!  Who am I, then?  What—­what have I a right to call myself?”

With a glance at the door of the sitting-room, nervousness bringing the sweat to his forehead, Gammon told what he knew, all except the burning of the will, and the fact of Greenacre’s mission to Ireland.  The listener was at first sight utterly bewildered, looked incredulous, and only when certain details had been repeated and emphasized began to grasp the reality of what she heard.

“Oh!” she exclaimed at length in profound agitation, “that explains so many things!  I never thought of this, but I’ve often wondered.  I understand now.”

She paused, struggling to control herself.  Then, not without dignity, in the tone and with the face that are natural at such moments only to a woman here and there; the nobler of her sex, she added: 

“I can’t go to the hospital.  Someone else must tell me about him.  I can’t go.”

“I shall have time to call on my way,” said Gammon, “and I could send you a wire.”

“Will you?  I can’t go.”

She sobbed, but quietly, hiding her face in her hands.  Gammon, more distressed by her emotion than he had ever felt at the sight of a woman weeping, did his clumsy best to solace her.  He would call at the hospital straight away and telegraph the news as soon as possible.  And anything else he could learn about Lord Polperro should be made known to her without delay.  He wrote on a piece of paper the address in Sloane Street, and that of the house in Stanhope Gardens.  On the point of departure something occurred to him that it was wise to say.

“I shouldn’t do anything just yet.”  He looked at her impressively.  “In your position I should just wait a little.  I’m sure it would be better, and I may be able to give you a reason before long.”