“I see,” said Bertie. “Your husband—the man who was with you——”
She nodded, and raised her hand to her lips with the action of drinking.
“Yes, gentlemen, he’s my husband, and the money’s gone where it always goes. If he’d only left me enough to buy a blanket or a thick shawl for her; but——”
She stopped and rocked the child, crooning to it soothingly.
Bertie put his hand in his pocket, then uttered an exclamation of disappointment.
“By Jove! I’ve left my purse in my other coat. Faradeane, lend me——”
Faradeane straightened himself and came forward.
“Let me look at the child,” he said, in his low, musical voice.
The woman looked up at him for an instant with the mother’s searching glance; then, reading something in his eyes that reassured her, threw the shawl off the child’s face and turned it toward him.
It was a poor, thin little mite, whose face should have been white, but was flushed and burning.