I told him, and not waiting for any further questions, demanded if I might not see the body of the young girl.
He led me at once to the room in which it lay, and stood respectfully at the door while I went in alone. The sight I saw has never left me. Go where I will, I see ever before me that pure young face, with its weary look hushed in the repose of death. It haunts me, it accuses me. It asks me where is the noble womanhood that might have blossomed from this sweet bud, had it not been for my pusillanimity and love of life? But when I try to answer, I am stopped by that image of death, with its sealed lips and closed eyes never to open again—never, never, whatever my longing, my anguish, or my despair.
But the worst shock was to come yet. As I left the room and went stumbling down the stairs, I was met by the officer and led again into the apartment I had first entered on the ground floor.
"There is some one here," he began, "whom you may like to question."
Thinking it to be the woman of the house, I advanced, though somewhat reluctantly, when a sight met my eyes that made me fall back in astonishment and dread. It was the figure of a woman dressed all in gray, with a dark-blue veil drawn tightly over her features.
"Good God!" I murmured, "who is this?"
"The woman who brought her here," observed the officer. "Farrell, there, has just found her."
And then I perceived darkly looming in the now heavy dusk the form of another man, whose unconscious and business-like air proclaimed him to be a member of the force.
"Her name is Sophie Preston," the officer continued, motioning to the woman to throw up her veil. "She is a hard character, and some day will have to answer for her many crimes."
Meanwhile, I stood rooted to the ground; the name, the face were strange, and neither that of her whom I had inwardly accused of this wrong.