“Nay, nay, my poor sufferer, rather I might ask forgiveness of you.”  She takes the woman by the hand, and, with an air of regained calmness, raises her from the floor.  With her, the outer life seems preparing the inner for what 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 find me out, the child was an incumbrance I had no means of supporting.  I parted with her-yes, yes, I parted with her to Mother Bridges, who kept a stand at a corner in West street—­”

“And then what became of her?” again interposes Madame Montford.  The woman assumes a sullenness, and it is some time before she can be got to proceed.