"But there is the mark, father," Rupert said.
"Yes, there is the mark," Mrs. Clinton repeated.
"I did not know you had a mark, Rupert. I wonder we never noticed it, Lucy."
"It is a very tiny one, father. I never noticed it myself--indeed I can hardly see it before a glass, for it is rather at the back of the shoulder--until Edgar noticed it one day. It is not larger than the head of a good-sized pin. It is a little dark-brown mole. Perhaps it was smaller and lighter when I was a baby; but it must have been there then, or she would not have known about it."
"That is so, Rupert; but the mere fact that it is there does not in any way prove that you are our son. Just see what Edgar says about it in his letter. Remember the woman could not have known which of you boys had the mark; and that she did not know, that is to say, that she had not recognized the likeness, appears from Edgar's letter. This is what he says: 'She said that one of us had a small mole on the shoulder. I knew that Rupert had a tiny mole there; and she said that was the mark by which she knew your son from hers.' Suppose Edgar had replied, 'Yes, I have such a mark on my shoulder,' might she not have said, that is the mark by which I can distinguish my son from that of Captain Clinton?"
The others were silent. Then Mrs. Clinton said, "You know, Percy, I do not wish to prove that one more than the other of the boys is ours; but naturally the woman would wish to benefit her own boy, and if it had been her own boy who had the mark, why should she not have told Edgar that she had made a mistake, and that it was Rupert who was her son?"
"I do not suppose, Lucy, that she cared in the slightest which was her son; her main object, of course, was to extort money. Edgar does not say anything at all about that; and of course at first she would try and make out that she was ready to sacrifice herself for him, and would scarcely say that she expected him to make her a handsome allowance when he came into the property, but I have no doubt that was her motive. Well, you see, she had already begun with Edgar. Suppose she said that she had made a mistake, and Rupert was her son. Edgar would have gone in and told him, and would probably have telegraphed to me, so that I could get to Rupert before this woman saw him, and she would have known then that her story would have been upset altogether. No court of law would attach any weight to what she might say. She would have to stand confessed as having been concerned in a gross fraud, and with having lied at first; and unless she was in a position to produce corroborative evidence to prove that her child had this mark, her word would go for nothing.