thrown up the sponge
from the outset, and now he was going to give himself into her hands.
Only for that pathetic look in his eyes and that searching tone in his
voice she could have found it in her heart to laugh.

She let her cape drop back from her shoulders, revealing her round bust
and swanlike arms, and crossing one leg over the other she displayed the
edge of a lace skirt and the point of a red slipper. Then she coughed a
little behind a perfumed lace handkerchief and prepared to listen.

"You are the daughter of an ancient family," he said, "older than the
house it lived in, and prouder than a line of kings. And whatever
sorrows you may have seen, you knew what it was to have a mother who
nursed you and a father who loved you, and a home that was your own. Can
you realise what it is to have known neither father nor mother, to be
homeless, nameless, and alone?"

She looked up--a deep furrow had crossed his brow, which she had not
seen there before.

"Happy the child," he said, "though shame stands beside his cradle, who
has one heart beating for him in a cruel world. That was not my case. I
never knew my mother."

The mocking fire had died out of Roma's face, and she uncrossed her
knees.

"My mother was the victim of a heartless man and a cruel law. She tied
to her baby's wrist a paper on which she had written its father's name,
placed it in the rota at the Foundling of Santo Spirito, and flung
herself into the Tiber."

Roma drew the cape over her shoulders.

"She lies in an unnamed pauper's grave in the Campo Verano."

"_Your_ mother?"

"Yes. My earliest memory is of being put out to nurse at a farmstead in
the Campagna. It was the time of revolution; the treasury of the Pope
was not yet replaced by the treasury of the King, the nuns at Santo
Spirito had no money with which to pay their pensions; and I was like a
child forsaken by its own, a fledgling in a foreign nest."

"Oh!"

"Those were the days when scoundrels established abroad traded in the
white slavery of poor Italian boys. They scoured the country, gathered
them up, put them in railway trucks like cattle, and despatched them to
foreign countries. My foster-parents parted with me for money, and I was
sent to London."

Roma's bosom was heaving, and tears were gathering in her eyes.

"My next memory is of living in a large half-empty house in Soho--fifty
foreign boys crowded together. The big ones were sent out into the
streets with an