xiety. "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 her agitation with
unmoved muscle. To him it is a true index to the sequel. "If you will
pardon me, Madame," he continues, "as I was about to say of this
miserable shoemaker, he took to drink, as all our white mechanics do,
and then used to abuse her. We don't think anything of these people, you
see, who after giving themselves up to whiskey, die in the poor house, a
terrible death. This shoemaker, of whom I speak, died, and she was
turned into the streets by her landlord, and that sent her to living
with a 'yellow fellow,' as we call them. Soon after this she died--so
re