before an affliction to which all the rest seemed as nought.
With that affliction he broke down at once, and died a few days after
his wife, leaving an infant not a week old. A French female singer, of
some repute in the theatres, and making a provincial tour, was lodging
in the same house as the young couple. She had that compassionate heart
which is more common than prudence or very strict principle with the
tribes who desert the prosaic true world for the light sparkling false
one. She had assisted the young couple, in their later days, with purse
and kind offices; had been present at the birth of the infant--the death
of the mother; and had promised Arthur Branthwaite that she would
take care of his child, until she could safely convey it to his wife's
relations, while he wept to own that they, poor as himself, must regard
such a charge as a burthen.

The singer wrote to apprise Mrs. Vance of the death of her daughter and
son-in-law, and the birth of the infant whom she undertook shortly to
send to England. But the babe, whom meanwhile she took to herself, got
hold of her affections; with that yearning for children which makes
so remarkable and almost uniform a characteristic of French women (if
themselves childless) in the wandering Bohemian class that separates
them from the ordinary household affections, never dead in the heart
of woman till womanhood itself be dead, the singer clung to the orphan
little one to whom she was for the moment rendering the cares of a
mother. She could not bear to part with it; she resolved to adopt it as
her own. The knowledge of Mrs. Vance's circumstances--the idea that the
orphan, to herself a blessing, would be an unwelcome encumbrance to its
own relations--removed every scruple from a mind unaccustomed to suffer
reflection to stand in the way of an impulse. She wrote word to Mrs.
Vance that the child was dead. She trusted that her letter would
suffice, without other evidence, to relations so poor, and who could
have no suspicion of any interest to deceive them. Her trust was
well founded. Mrs. Vance and the boy Frank, whose full confidence and
gratitude had been already secured to their correspondent for her kind
offices to the young parents, accepted, without a demur or a question,
the news that the infant was no more. The singer moved on to the next
town at which she was professionally engaged. The infant, hitherto
brought up by hand, became ailing. The medical adviser called i