"Take me away, take me away!" cried the prisoner in a tense voice. "Paul, Paul, my own little Paul!" The woman's breath came and went in gusts, and her child cried from the convulsive pressure to her breast.
There was a faint commotion. Among the people in the court, huddled like sheep, there was a harsh scraping of feet, and some suppressed whispering. The stolid faces on the bench turned and smiled slightly in the yellow gleam of the gas that burned in front of them. Then the momentary bustle ended, the woman and child were gone, and the calm monotony of the court was resumed.
Six months later a handsome woman, still little more than a girl, yet with eyes of suffering, stepped up to the door of a house in Pimlico and knocked timidly.
"I wish to see Mrs. Drayton," she said, when the door was opened by an elderly person.
"Bless you, they're gone, Mrs. Drayton and her Husband."
"Gone!" said the young woman, "gone! What do you mean?"
"Removed--shifted?" The idea seemed to struggle its slow way into her brain.
"In course--what else, when the big hotel fails and he loses his job? Rents can't be paid on nothing a week, and something to put in the mouth besides."
"Gone? Are you mad? Woman, think what you're saying. Gone where?"
"How do I know where? Mad, indeed! I'll not say but other folk look a mort madder nor ever I looked."
The young woman took her by the shoulder.
"Don't say that--don't say you don't know where they're gone. They've got my child, I tell you; my poor little Paul.
"Oh, so you're the young party as drowned herself, are you? Well, they're gone anyways, and the little chit with them, and there's no saying where. You may believe me. Ask the neighbors else."
The young woman leaned against the door-jamb with a white face and great eyes.
"Well, well, how hard she takes it. Deary me, deary me, she's not a bad sort, after all. Well, well, who'd ha' thought it! There, there, come in and sit awhile. It is cruel to lose one's babby--and me to tell her, too. Misbegotten or not, it's one's own flesh and blood, and that's what I always says."
The young woman had been drawn into the house and seated on a chair. She got up again with the face of an old woman.
"Rest awhile, do now, my dear--there--there."