weren't about town in the old days, or you'd a-bin after her,
cuss ye."

"After Rosanna?"

"The werry girl," answered Mother Guttersnipe. "She were on the stage,
she were, an' my eye, what a swell she were, with all the coves a-dyin'
for 'er, an' she dancin' over their black 'earts, cuss 'em; but she was
allays good to me till 'e came."

"Who came?"

"'E!" yelled the old woman, raising herself on her arm, her eyes
sparkling with vindictive fury. "'E, a-comin' round with di'monds and
gold, and a-ruinin' my pore girl; an' how 'e's 'eld 'is bloomin' 'ead
up all these years as if he were a saint, cuss 'im--cuss 'im."

"Whom does she mean?" whispered Calton to Kilsip.

"Mean!" screamed Mother Guttersnipe, whose sharp ears had caught the
muttered question. "Why, Mark Frettlby!"

"Good God!" Calton rose up in his astonishment, and even Kilsip's
inscrutable countenance displayed some surprise.

"Aye, 'e were a swell in them days," pursued Mother Guttersnipe, "and
'e comes a-philanderin' round my gal, cuss 'im, an' ruins 'er, and
leaves 'er an' the child to starve, like a black-'earted villain as 'e
were."

"The child! Her name?"

"Bah," retorted the hag, with scorn, "as if you didn't know my
gran'daughter Sal."

"Sal, Mark Frettlby's child?"

"Yes, an' as pretty a girl as the other, tho' she 'appened to be born
on the wrong side of the 'edge. Oh, I've seen 'er a-sweepin' along in
'er silks an' satins as tho' we were dirt--an' Sal 'er 'alf
sister--cuss 'er."

Exhausted by the efforts she had made, the old woman sank back in her
bed, while Calton sat dazed, thinking over the astounding revelation
that had just been made. That Rosanna Moore should turn out to be Mark
Frettlby's mistress he hardly wondered at; after all, the millionaire
was but a man, and in his young days had been no better and no worse
than the rest of his friends. Rosanna Moore was pretty, and was
evidently one of those women who--rakes at heart--prefer the
untrammelled freedom of being a mistress, to the sedate bondage of a
wife. In questions of morality, so many people live in glass houses,
that there are few nowadays who can afford to throw stones. Calton did
not think any the worse of Frettlby for his youthful follies. But what
did surprise him was that Frettlby should be so heartless, as to leave
his child to the tender mercies of an old hag like Mother Guttersnipe.
It was so entirely different from what he knew of the man, that he was
in