ooner you
cease tormenting yourself the better it will be for you. If you
possessed all the wealth of all the Indies, you could not set right all
the discomforts in the world, and if you began to refurnish all the
attics in this square, there would still remain all the attics in all
the other squares and streets to put in order. And there you are!"

Mr. Carrisford sat and bit his nails as he looked into the glowing bed
of coals in the grate.

"Do you suppose," he said slowly, after a pause--"do you think it is
possible that the other child--the child I never cease thinking of, I
believe--could be--could POSSIBLY be reduced to any such condition as
the poor little soul next door?"

Mr. Carmichael looked at him uneasily. He knew that the worst thing
the man could do for himself, for his reason and his health, was to
begin to think in the particular way of this particular subject.

"If the child at Madame Pascal's school in Paris was the one you are in
search of," he answered soothingly, "she would seem to be in the hands
of people who can afford to take care of her. They adopted her because
she had been the favorite companion of their little daughter who died.
They had no other children, and Madame Pascal said that they were
extremely well-to-do Russians."

"And the wretched woman actually did not know where they had taken
her!" exclaimed Mr. Carrisford.

Mr. Carmichael shrugged his shoulders.

"She was a shrewd, worldly Frenchwoman, and was evidently only too glad
to get the child so comfortably off her hands when the father's death
left her totally unprovided for. Women of her type do not trouble
themselves about the futures of children who might prove burdens. The
adopted parents apparently disappeared and left no trace."

"But you say 'IF the child was the one I am in search of. You say 'if.'
We are not sure. There was a difference in the name."

"Madame Pascal pronounced it as if it were Carew instead of Crewe--but
that might be merely a matter of pronunciation. The circumstances were
curiously similar. An English officer in India had placed his
motherless little girl at the school. He had died suddenly after
losing his fortune." Mr. Carmichael paused a moment, as if a new
thought had occurred to him. "Are you SURE the child was left at a
school in Paris? Are you sure it was Paris?"

"My dear fellow," broke forth Carrisford, with restless bitterness, "I
am SURE of nothing. I never saw either the