taken her purse! She was alone and penniless in a strange
city! The hungry wailings of her witless child towards evening at length
aroused her from the stupor of despair into which she had fallen. The
miserable resource of pawning occurred to her: she could at least, by
pledging a part of her wardrobe, procure sustenance for her child till
she could hear from her sister; and with trembling hands she began
arranging a bundle of such things as she could best spare, when the
landlady abruptly entered the room, with a peremptory demand--as her
husband was not returned, and did not appear likely to do so--for a
month's rent in advance, that being the term the apartments were engaged
for. The tears, entreaties, expostulations of the miserable wife were of
no avail. Not one article, the woman declared, should leave her house
till her claim was settled. She affected to doubt, perhaps really did so,
that Esther was married; and hinted coarsely at an enforcement of the
laws against persons who had no visible means of subsistence. In a
paroxysm of despair, the unhappy woman rushed out of the house; and
accompanied by her hungry child, again sought the counting-house of the
Messrs. Roberts. She was now as much too late as she had been too early
in the morning: the partners and clerks had gone, and she appears to have
been treated with some rudeness by the porter, who was closing the
premises when she arrived. Possibly the wildness of her looks, and the
incoherence of her speech and manner, produced an impression unfavorable
to her. Retracing her steps--penniless, hungry, sick at heart--she
thought, as she afterwards declared, that she recognized my wife in one
of the numerous ladies seated before the counters of a fashionable shop
in one of the busiest thoroughfares. She entered, and not till she
approached close to the lady discovered her mistake. She turned
despairingly away; when a piece of rich lace, lying apparently unheeded
on the counter, met her eye, and a dreadful suggestion crossed her
fevered brain; here at least was the means of procuring food for her
wailing child. She glanced hastily and fearfully round. No eye, she
thought, observed her; and, horror of horrors! a moment afterwards she
had concealed the lace beneath her shawl, and with tottering feet was
hastily leaving the shop. She had not taken half-a-dozen steps when a
heavy hand was laid upon her shoulder, and a voice, as of a serpent
hissing in her ear, commanded