that of any child could be. I was married at twenty, out of a family not rich but abundantly well-to-do, to a man of my own sphere—a man well educated, and with talents, as a painter, that might have secured to him a name and ample means, a fortune even. Ours was a love match, we thought; and I, at least, was happy for the first two years of our wedded life. Then there came a change in him; he made fresh acquaintances, out of his own circle, and, step by step, wandered away into what is called the world of pleasure. He ceased to paint, he took to drink, he passed most of his time away from home, he squandered my little fortune in dissipation, and, next, he reduced me and my child to homelessness."
She told me all this without a taint of bitterness in her voice, only a heavy sadness, as of a misfortune that must be borne with patience, because it is irremediable.
"Then," she continued, "there followed a time when I saw him only at lengthened intervals. How he lived I knew not; I and my boy would have starved but for the money I raised on the few rings and trinkets I had saved out of the home-wreck. My parents would have taken me back to them, but only on condition that I sought a divorce from my husband; and, for the good of my boy, I thought, I decisively refused to accept that condition. Oh, that I could have foreseen!"
Here a flood of tears choked her utterance for a minute or more, and I debated with myself whether I was not acting a cruel part by suffering her to put herself to this pain; but I was deeply—much more deeply than I could at the moment account for interested in the story of her trials, and could not bring myself to check her confidences.
"Could I have foreseen at that time, all the misery and shame that now weigh upon me and my poor boy would have been averted," she went on. "I have said I did not know how my husband lived. Perhaps, even disgraced as he was, he might have retrieved himself by returning to his profession as a painter; but he never made the least effort in that direction. Later, I learned that his sole means of subsistence were the precarious gains of an outside book-maker and, later still—oh, my God!—what it was I then learned!—that he had become one of a daring gang of burglars; that he had been captured, convicted, sentenced to five years' penal servitude!"
"How long back was that?" I asked, hastily, for the horror of this scoundrel's return, with a ticket-of-leave, had flashed upon my mind.
"Three years ago," she replied; adding, "I know why you ask me that. Yes! a few months hence he may be released, and may claim me and his son. God forgive him if he does, for it will be my death, and the destruction of my poor boy!"
This suggestion of the horrors that might be hanging over these two misfortune-stricken beings filled me with mingled alarm and indignation; further mixed, I own, with a feeling of cowardice, which urged me to get away from its contemplation.
"How long have you contrived to live without assistance?" I asked, nervously and inconsequently.
She replied: "I have been able to get an engagement at one or other of the theatres on this side of the water for a few weeks at Christmas-time, as a figurante until last winter, when, to add to my trouble, I fell ill—too ill to encounter the fatigue. It was then that my boy first went into the dreadful streets, and helped to save his mother from starvation by selling newspapers. But he has told you of the peril, that life is beyond his powers; and so it is that, turning to your kind offer, I resolved to tell you the whole truth concerning him before allowing him to accept it."
I was about to say, "Let him come to me at once," when I heard sounds of hurrying footsteps upon the stairs. The room door flew open, and the poor boy, a newspaper in his hand, his face white as ashes, and his eyes seemingly starting from his head, rushed in, almost shrieking—
"Oh, mother! mother!"
"Jack, my darling! my darling! what is the matter?"
The agonised boy had thrown himself wildly at her knees, and, sobbing convulsively, buried his face in her lap.
"My Jack! my darling! don't cry so, but tell me what has happened to you," cried his mother, lovingly soothing him with hands and voice.
"My father! my father!" he sobbed.
"Oh, my God! you have not seen him?—it is not that?" she asked, in a fainting tone.
"Mother, dear mother, I can't tell you: it's in the newspaper!"
I snatched up the paper which had dropped from his trembling hand. My
