is to come. "But I have long sought you--sought you in
obedience to the demands of my conscience, which I would the world gave
me power to purify; and now I have found you, and with you some rest for
my aching heart. Come, sit down; forget what you have suffered; tell me
what befell you, and what has become of the child; tell me all, and
remember that I will provide for you a comfortable home for the rest of
your life." Madame motions her to a chair, struggling the while to
suppress her own feelings.

"I loved the child you intrusted to my care; yes, God knows I loved it,
and watched over it for two years, as carefully as a mother. But I was
poor, and the brother, in whose hands you intrusted the amount for its
support (this, the reader must here know, was not a brother, but the
paramour of Madame Montford), failed, and gave me nothing after the
first six months. I never saw him, and when I found you had gone
abroad--" The woman hesitates, and, with weeping eyes and trembling
voice, again implores forgiveness. "My husband gave himself up to
drink, lost his situation, and then he got to hating the child, and
abusing me for taking it, and embarrassing our scanty means of living.
Night and day, I was harassed and abused, despised and neglected. I was
discouraged, and gave up in despair. I clung to the child as long as I
could. I struggled, and struggled, and struggled--" Here the woman
pauses, and with a submissive look, again hangs down her head and sobs.

"Be calm, be calm," says Madame Montford, drawing nearer to her, and
making an effort to inspirit her. "Throw off all your fears, forget what
you have suffered, for I, too, have suffered. And you parted with the
child?"

"Necessity forced me," pursues the woman, shaking her head. "I saw only
the street before me on one side, and felt only the cold pinchings of
poverty on the other. You had gone abroad--"

"It was my intention to have adopted the child as my own when I
returned," interrupts Madame Montford, still clinging to that flattering
hope in which the criminal sees a chance of escape.

"And I," resumes the woman, "left the husband who neglected me, and who
treated me cruelly, and gave myself,--perhaps I was to blame for it,--up
to one who befriended me. He was the only one who seemed to care for me,
or to have any sympathy for me. But he, like myself, was poor; and,
being compelled to flee from our home, and to live in obscurity, where
my husband could not f