it seemed to me at that wicked time—­to help on my work of vengeance.  Your brother’s wife died, giving birth to a female child.  I used to ride into the city twice a week regularly after this, and watch for him near his place of business, that I might gloat on his pale, unhappy face.  I see the look of horror with which you receive this part of my confession; but you will bear in mind, sir, that I am hero to tell the truth, concealing nothing.  You remember, sir, the old lines about a woman scorned?  I, sir, can bear witness to their awful truth.”

Another fit of coughing here interrupted her.  At length she resumed, in a feebler voice:  “I must hasten while I can talk at all.  One day, while I was watching near your brother’s house for his appearance, the door opened, and a servant appeared, with a child in her arms—­his child.  The servant walked down the street, and I followed her, unobserved, until she came to Washington Parade Ground.  She entered the park, and took a seat near the fountain.  I sat down on a bench near her.  It was not long before I made the girl’s acquaintance, and had the child in my arms, caressing it with well-counterfeited kindness.  Suddenly, the girl recollected that she had left the street door of the house unlocked, and was afraid that the house, having not a soul in it, would be robbed during her absence.  She was so much troubled about it, that she asked me to hold the child—­then about a year old—­until she could go and lock up the house, and return.  A horrible suggestion came into my mind, and I took the child in my arms.  The servant was no sooner out of my sight, than I rose, and, clasping the child tightly, walked rapidly in the opposite direction.  When I had got out of the park, among the side streets near North River, I ran until I was tired, turning at every corner, to avoid pursuit.  My plan was clear from the moment that the child was left in my charge.  It was, to give her into the keeping of some stranger, and so rob the widowed father of his only child.  It was a scheme worthy of the lost and wretched woman that I then was.”

A fit of coughing here set in, interrupting the narrative for several minutes.  Marcus offered his strange guest a glass of water.  She sipped it, until her cough was checked.

“I wished to make a full and minute statement, sir; but this cough again warns me to be very brief.  In a word, then, I had not gone far, before I saw a German woman—­a neat, elderly person—­sitting on the stoop of her house.  An impulse moved me to leave the child with her.  I accosted her, but she answered me in German, saying that she could not speak English.  Hardly knowing what I did, I mounted the steps, and placed the child in her arms, first kissing it.  Then I tossed my pocket book, containing about twenty dollars, into her lap, and, without another word or act, ran off again.  As I drew near the next corner, I turned, and saw the German woman still sitting on the stoop, looking at the child, and then at the money, and then at my flying form, in perfect amazement.