The old woman took another drink of gin, and it seemed to put life into her, for she sat up in the bed, and commenced to talk rapidly, as though she were afraid of dying before her secret was told.

“You’ve been ’ere afore?” she said, pointing one skinny finger at Calton, “and you wanted to find out all about ’er; but you didn’t.  She wouldn’t let me tell, for she was always a proud jade, a-flouncin’ round while ’er pore mother was a-starvin’.”

“Her mother!  Are you Rosanna Moore’s mother?” cried Calton, considerably astonished.

“May I die if I ain’t,” croaked the hag. “’Er pore father died of drink, cuss ‘im, an’ I’m a-follerin’ ’im to the same place in the same way.  You 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 inclined to think that the old woman was playing him a trick.