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woman--Mrs. Sabin--was terribly excited on seeing them, and she said things which astounded me. I asked her to explain them, and we talked--alone--for nearly an hour. I admit that she was scarcely responsible, that she died within a few hours of our conversation, of brain disease. But I still do not see--I wish to heaven I did!--any way out of what she told me--when one comes to combine it with--well, with other things. But whether I should finally have decided to make any use of the information I am not sure. But unfortunately"--he pointed to the letter still in Flaxman's hand--"that shows me that other persons--persons unknown to me--are in possession of some, at any rate, of the facts--and therefore that it is now vain to hope that we can stifle the thing altogether."
"You have no idea who wrote the letter?" said Flaxman, holding it up.
"None whatever," was the emphatic reply.
"It is a disguised hand"--mused Flaxman--"but an educated one--more or less. However--we will return presently to the letter. Mrs. Sabin's communication to you was of a nature to confirm the statements contained in it?"
"Mrs. Sabin declared to me that having herself--independently--become aware of certain facts, while she was a servant in Lady Fox-Wilton's employment, that lady--no doubt in order to ensure her silence--took her abroad with herself and her young sister, Miss Alice, to a place in France she had some difficulty in pronouncing--it sounded to me like Grenoble; that there Miss Puttenham became the mother of a child, which passed thenceforward as the child of Sir Ralph and Lady Fox-Wilton, and received the name of Hester. She herself nursed Miss Puttenham, and no doctor was admitted. When the child was two months old, she accompanied the sisters to a place on the Riviera, where they took a villa. Here Sir Ralph Wilton, who was terribly broken and distressed by the whole thing, joined them, and he made an arrangement with her by which she agreed to go to the States and hold her tongue. She wrote to h