and resuming his sallies.  “He will not come to night,” he mutters, as he pauses at the “Ladies’ door,” then turns and rings the bell.  The well dressed and highly-perfumed servant who guards the door, admits him with a scrutinizing eye.  “Beg pardon,” he says, with a mechanical bow.  He recognizes the stranger, bows, and motions his hands.  “Twice,” continues the servant, “she has sent a messenger to inquire of your coming.”  The figure in the talma answers with a bow, slips something into the hand of the servant, passes softly up the great stairs, and is soon lost to sight.  In another minute he enters, without knocking, a spacious parlor, decorated and furnished most sumptuously.  “How impatiently I have waited your coming,” whispers, cautiously, a richly-dressed lady, as she rises from a velvet covered lounge, on which she had reclined, and extends her hand to welcome him.  “Madame, your most obedient,” returns the man, bowing and holding her delicate hand in his.  “You have something of importance,—­something to relieve my mind?” she inquires, watching his lips, trembling, and in anxiety.  “Nothing definite,” he replies, touching her gently on the arm, as she begs him to be seated in the great arm-chair.  He lays aside his talma, places his gloves on the centre-table, which is heaped with an infinite variety of delicately-enveloped missives and cards, all indicative of her position in fashionable society.  “I may say, Madame, that I sympathize with you in your anxiety; but as yet I have discovered nothing to relieve it.”  Madame sighs, and draws her chair near him, in silence.  “That she is the woman you seek I cannot doubt.  While on the Neck, I penetrated the shanty of one Thompson, a poor mechanic-our white mechanics, you see, are very poor, and not much thought of-who had known her, given her a shelter, and several times saved her from starvation.  Then she left the neighborhood and took to living with a poor wretch of a shoemaker.”

“Poor creature,” interrupts Madame Montford, for it is she whom Mr. Snivel addresses.  “If she be dead-oh, dear!  That will be the end.  I never shall know what became of that child.  And to die ignorant of its fate will—­” Madame pauses, her color changes, she seems seized with some violent emotion.  Mr. Snivel perceives her agitation, and begs she will remain calm.  “If that child had been my own,” she resumes, “the responsibility had not weighed heavier on my conscience.  Wealth, position, the pleasures of society-all sink into insignificance when compared with my anxiety for the fate of that child.  It is like an arrow piercing my heart, like a phantom haunting me in my dreams, like an evil spirit waking me at night to tell me I shall die an unhappy woman for having neglected one I was bound by the commands of God to protect-to save, perhaps, from a life of shame.”  She lets fall the satin folds of her dress, buries her face in her hands, and gives vent to her tears in loud sobs.  Mr. Snivel contemplates