Page:The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.djvu/193

Rh "Who 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, blarst 'im, 'an seduces 'er, and leaves 'er and 'er child to starve, like a black-'earted villian as 'e were."

"The child! Her name!"

"Bah," retorted the hag, with scorn, "as if you didn't know my gran'darter 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 in a dazed manner, 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, he 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, so Calton did not think any the worse of Frettlby for his youthful follies. But what he did wonder at, 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 inclined to think it a trick of the old woman's.

"Did Mr. Frettlby know Sal was his child?" he asked.

"Not 'e," snarled Mother Guttersnipe, in an exultant tone. "'E thought she was dead, 'e did, after Roseanner gave him the go-by."

"And why did you not tell him?"

"Cause I wanted to break 'is heart, if 'e 'ad any," said the old beldame, vindictively. "Sal was a-goin' to 'ell as