“You must let the police know,” said the lady.

“That the child is web-footed? No, I don’t think so,” said sir Wilton.

He got up, went out, and ordered a groom to ride hard to the village and tell the police what had happened. Within the hour a constable appeared, come to inquire when the fugitives were seen last and what they wore—the answer to which question set the police looking for persons very different in appearance from Jane and her nursling. Nothing was heard of them, and the inquiry, never prosecuted with any vigour, was by degrees dropped entirely.

John Tuke had grumbled at his wife’s desertion of him for her sister. But he gave in to the prolongation of her absence with a better grace, when he learned how the motherless baby was regarded by his father. The humanity of the man rose in defence of the injured. He felt also that, in espousing the cause of his wife’s nephew, scorned by his baronet father, he was taking the part of his own down-trodden class. He was greatly perplexed, however, as to what end the thing was to have.

He was in bed asleep when suddenly he opened his eyes and saw beside him the wife he had not seen for twelve months, with the stolen child in her arms. When he heard how the stepmother had treated her, and how the baby was likely to fare, he was filled with indignation. But while he thoroughly appreciated and approved of his wife’s decision and energy, he saw that the deed exposed them to frightful consequences if it were discovered.

And discovered it must be, eventually. But when he understood the precautions she had taken, and thought about how often the police fail, he had better hopes of escape. One thing he never dreamed of—and that was, restoring the child. Often at night he would lie wondering how far, in case of their being tried for kidnapping, the defence would reach, that his wife was the child’s aunt.

When Jane had left for Mortgrange they had agreed that her husband should say she was gone to her father’s. Since nobody where they lived knew who or where her father was, nobody had any possible clue as to where she had been. For some time after her return she did not show herself, leaving it to her husband to say she had come back with her baby. Then she began to appear with the child, and so managed her references to her absence that no one dreamed of his not being her own, or imagined that she had left her husband for any other reason than to be tended during and after her own childbirth at her old home. After a few years, even the fact of his not having been born in that house was forgotten, and Richard grew up as the son of John Tuke, the bookbinder, with not a single doubt as to his parentage.

— Forty-Three —