" I had no doubt
that if the lady were the child's mother, she would soon reappear; and
I need not add that my expectations proved correct. After having
waited some fifteen minutes, I saw her returning with swift, wary
steps and watchful eyes, like some lithe wild thing that scents danger
in the air. As she came up to the nurse, she dropped down into the
seat with a fine affectation of weariness, and began to chat with an
attempt at indifference which was truly pathetic. Her eyes seemed all
the while to be devouring the child with a wild, hungry tenderness.
Suddenly she pounced upon it, hugged it tightly in her arms, and quite
forgetting her _role_, strove no more to smother her sobs. The nurse
was greatly alarmed; I heard her expostulating, but could not
distinguish the words. The child cried. Suddenly the lady rose,
explained briefly, as I afterward heard, that she had herself lately
lost a child, and hurried away. At a safe distance I followed her, and
succeeded in tracking her nearly a mile down Broadway, where she
vanished into what appeared to be a genteel dressmaking establishment.
By the aid of a friend of mine, a dealer in furnishing goods, whom I
thought it prudent to take into my confidence, I ascertained that she
called herself Mrs.
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