The woman started to her feet at the sound of his voice, and looked him full in the face with an expression of utter wretchedness. Her eyes were inflamed and swollen with tears, and every feature was quivering as if she had no control over them. She was so miserable a creature that Daniel did not know in what words to speak to her; but his heart was moved with an unutterable compassion, unknown to him till now.
He even felt a sympathy for her, as if he had once been in the same depths of degradation, as he looked down shudderingly into the deep abyss where she had fallen by her sins; and the sense of her misery touched him so closely that he would have given his life for her salvation. He stretched out his hand towards her, but she pushed it away, and with a groan of despair she fled from the light, and sought to hide herself in the darkness of the foggy streets.
But Daniel was not easily turned aside from his desire to bring some help to Jessica’s mother, even if it were no more than to rescue her from the chilliness of the November night. He followed her with steps as rapid as her own, and only that she had the first start he would have been quickly at her side. She fled swiftly along the streets to escape from him, and he pursued her, hoping that she would soon weary and would turn to speak to him.
But she kept on until Daniel found himself at the entrance of one of the old bridges of the city which span the wide waters of the river. Side by side with it a new bridge was being constructed with massive beams of timber, and huge blocks of stone, and vast girders of iron, lying like some giant skeleton enveloped in the fog, yet showing dimly through it by the glare of red lights and blazing torches, which were kindled here and there, and cast flickering gleams upon the black waters beneath, into which Daniel looked down with a shiver, as he paused for a moment in his pursuit.
But he had lost sight of the woman when he lifted up his eyes again, unless the strange dark figure on one of the great beams stretching over the river was the form of Jessica’s mother. He pressed towards it, quitting the safety of the old bridge; but, as a wild and very mournful cry smote upon his ear, he missed his footing, and fell heavily upon a pile of masonry at some distance below him.