to
believe that there could be any blood relationship between them, for
the girl's frame from head to foot was as delicate as the woman's
frame from head to foot was coarse and vulgar.

Naturally, therefore, it occurred to me that this was an excellent
opportunity to find out the truth of the matter. I determined to go
and bully the impudent hag into a confession; but of course
Wilderspin was the last man I should choose to accompany me on such
a mission. Your relative, Cyril Aylwin, was, as I believed, on the
Continent, expecting Wilderspin to join him there, or I might have
taken him with me.

I have always had great influence over Wilderspin, and I easily
persuaded him to remain in the studio while I went myself to the
woman's address, which he gave me. I knew that if the model were
really dead she would have to be buried by the parish at a pauper
funeral, that is to say, lowered into a deep pit with other paupers.
It was painful to me to think of this, and I determined to get her
buried myself. So I took a hansom and drove to the squalid court in
the neighbourhood of Holborn, where the woman lived.

On reaching the house, I found the door open. Wilderspin had
described to me the room occupied by Mrs. Gudgeon, so I went at once
upstairs. I found the model upon a mattress, her features horribly
contorted, lying in the same clothes apparently in which she had
fallen when seized.

In an armchair in the middle of the room was Mrs. Gudgeon, in a
drunken sleep so profound that I could not have roused her had I
tried. While I stood looking at the girl, something in the appearance
of her flesh--its freshness of hue--made me suspect that she was
still alive, and that she was only suffering from a seizure of a more
acute kind than any the woman had yet seen. As I stood looking at
these two it occurred to me that should the model recover from the
seizure this would be an excellent and quite unexpected opportunity
for me to get her away. The woman, I thought, would after a while
wake up, and find to her amazement the body gone of her whom she
thought dead. If she had really kidnapped the girl she would be
afraid to set any inquiry afoot. She might even perhaps imagine that
the girl's relations had traced her, found the dead body, and removed
it for burial while she, the kidnapper, was asleep.

After a while the expression of terror on the model's face began to
relax, and she soon awoke into that strange condition which h