people she loved and pitied. My father tried all he could to
make Peter seriously seek for his wife. We know now he had some false
clue and that he believed she and you were living in Liverpool. But
either from pride or indifference he would never see for himself these
two whose fortunes he watched so closely. Saunderson tells me it was
the younger Hibbault who supplied him with the false clue and found it
to his advantage to keep up the fraud. They can't trace either
Hibbault now. They seem to have emigrated. My father once visited
Peter, before Elizabeth left him. There was some dispute at the works
and a certain foreman named Felton protested against his orders. My
father heard the interview between them, and the man made a strong
appeal to him. He did his best as go-between and failed. Peter did not
quarrel about it. He was just immovable in his heavy way, but your
mother was greatly troubled over the whole business and was generously
good to Felton and his wife in the face of Peter's direct commands.
Ten years afterwards this man, tramping from Portsmouth to London in
search of work, met your mother again. He was evidently a man of
strong memory, and he knew her."

Christopher nodded. He remembered the little narrow paths in the tiny
garden, the smell of the box edging, a pink cabbage rose that fell
when the man's sleeve brushed against it. The man and his mother had
talked long and the old woman had asked him if he knew the man. The
next day they were on the road again and he had felt a resentment
towards this man as the cause. All these recollections crowded
themselves into his mind.

"Felton seems to have been a man with some strength of character. He
had easily promised your mother not to betray her existence to her
husband, but the memory of her face and some uneasy sense of unfitness
troubled him, I suppose. He remembered Mr. Aston, who had spoken for
him, and that he was something to do with these people. He turned up
here one day and Nevil had the sense to send him direct to us in
London. It was just at the time when I was wanting to adopt a child. I
had stopped cursing fate and myself, and I wanted something of my own
almost as fiercely as I wanted my freedom."

There was another long pause. This time Christopher put out his hand
and laid it on Aymer's.

"There isn't any more. We followed up the clue and found you. My
father made another appeal to Peter on behalf of his unknown son, and
Peter declare