For the last few days, since his encounter with her portrait at Lightmark’s studio, he had scarcely given her troubles a thought.  When the girl saw him, after a startled look and movement, she seemed to shrink still further into the folds of her rusty black cloak, and, to avoid meeting Rainham’s eyes, bent her head over the child who was seated at her side.  He found something irresistibly charming and pathetically generous in the girl’s spontaneous denial of any claim to his notice, although, except that he had promised to let her know anything he might learn of the whereabouts of the father of her child, he would have found it hard to establish in the mind of an outside critic that any such claim in fact existed.

“Well, my poor child,” he said softly, as he dropped into one of the vacant seats on the same bench, “how goes it with you and the little one?”

“Oh, sir, you shouldn’t speak to me—­not here.  Anyone might see you.  Pray go.  I know I shall get you into trouble, and you so kind!”

These words were spoken in a rapid, frightened whisper, and with an apprehensive glance at the intermittent stream of carriages passing within a few yards of them.  Rainham shrugged his shoulders pitifully, but found it rather difficult to say anything.  Certainly, his reputation was running a risk, and he felt that his indifference was somewhat exceptional.

“I’m sorry to say I’ve got no news for you,” he said presently, after a silent pause, during which he had observed that the wide-eyed child was really far prettier than many who (as he had been assured by the complacent matrons who exhibited them) were “little cherubs,” and that it was as scrupulously cared for as the little cherubs, even in their exhibition array.  “I haven’t been able to discover anything; but you mustn’t despair, we shall find him sooner or later.”

The girl glanced at him irresolutely, and then dropped her eyes again, leaning over the child.

“It’s no good, sir,” she said.  “I’m only sorry to have given you so much trouble already.  He won’t come back—­he’s tired of me.  He could find me if he wanted to, and watching and hunting for him like this would only set him more and more against me.”

Rainham, as he listened to her, rather puzzled by her sudden change of attitude since their last interview, was forced to admit mentally that her reasoning, if it lacked spontaneity, was, at all events, indisputably sound; and while he found himself doubting whether the victim was not better versed in worldliness than he had at first suspected, he still felt a curious reluctance which, though he was half ashamed of his delicacy, prevented him from suggesting that, sentimental reasons apart, the betrayer still ought to be discovered, if only in order to force him to provide for the maintenance of his child.  It hardly, perhaps, occurred to him that he, after all, would be the person who would suffer most, and he certainly did not for an instant credit the girl with any ulterior designs upon his purse.