"But I need not linger over these details. No efforts were spared, yet our search proved vain. When some time had elapsed, their direction changed, and a woman and child were sought for: in every part of London where destitution hides, in all the abodes of flaunting sin, in hospitals, in refuges, in charitable institutions,--in vain. Sometimes Blackett suggested that she might have taken another protector and gone abroad; he made all possible inquiry. She had never communicated with her home, or with any one who had formerly known her. I began to despair of finding her; and I had almost made up my mind to relinquish the search, when Blackett came to me one day, in great excitement for him, and told me he was confident of finding her in a day or two at the farthest. 'And the child?' I asked. No, he knew nothing of the child; the woman he had traced, and whom he believed to be my brother's deserted wife, had no child, had never had one, within the knowledge of the people from whom he had got his information; nevertheless he felt sure he was right this time, and the child might have died before she came across them. She must have suffered terribly. Then he told me his information came through a pawnbroker, of whom he had frequent occasion to make inquiries. This man had shown him a gold locket, which had evidently held a miniature, on the inside of which was engraved 'From Leonard to Clara,' and which had been pawned by a very poor but respectable person, whose address, in a miserable lane at Islington, he now gave to Blackett. He went to the place at once and questioned the woman, who was only too anxious to give all the information in her power in order to clear herself. She had received the locket in the presence of two persons, from a young woman who had lodged with her, and who had no other means of paying her. The young woman had gone away a week before, she did not know where; she had no money, and only a little bundle of clothes--a handkerchief full. She had no child, and had never said any thing about one. The woman did not know her name. She had taken a picture out of the locket She had red hair and dark eyes. This was all. I shall never forget the wretched feeling which came over me as I thought of the suffering this brief story implied, and of what the wretched woman might since have undergone. I remember so well, it was in January,--a dirty, wet, horrible day,--when Blackett told me all this; and I was haunted with the idea of the woman dying of cold and want in the dreadful streets. Blackett had no doubt of finding her now; she had evidently fallen to the veriest pauperism, and out of the lowest depths she would be drawn up, no doubt. So he set to work at once, but all in vain. Dead or living, no trace of her has ever been found; and the continuous search has been abandoned. Blackett only 'bears it in mind' now. Once he suggested to me, that as she was no doubt handsome, and not over particular, she might have got a living by sitting to the painters, and 'I'll try that lay,' he said; but nothing came of that either. I thought of it the day Annie and I met you f, at the Private View, and if I had had the opportunity, would have asked you if you knew such a face as the one we were only guessing at, after all; but you were hurried, and the occasion passed; and when we met again, Blackett had exhausted all sources of information in that direction, and there was nothing to be learned.
"This is the story I had to tell you, Ludlow, and to leave to your discretion to use when the time comes. Within the last week Blackett has made further attempts, and has again failed. Lionel is in London; but while I live he does not enter this house. I shall, after a while, when I am able, which I am not now, let him know that search has been unsuccessfully made for his wife, and demand that he shall furnish me with any clue in his possession, under the threat of immediate exposure. This, and every other plan, may be at any moment rendered impossible by my death; therefore I write this, and entreat you to continue the search until this woman be found, dead or living. So only can Annie's home be made happy and reputable for her when I shall have left it for ever. You will receive this from Annie's hands; a packet addressed to her will not be neglected or thrown aside; and if it becomes necessary for you to act for her, she will have the knowledge 05 your interference and obedience to your advice. I confide her to you, my dear Ludlow--as I said before--as the dearest living thing in all the world to me.--Yours ever,
"CATERHAM."
[CHAPTER V.]
DISMAY.
Mrs. Ludlow and Til had concluded the meal which is so generally advanced to a position of unnatural importance in a household devoid of the masculine element en permanence; and, the tea-things having been removed, the old lady, according to the established order, was provided with a book, over which she was expected to fall comfortably asleep. But she did not adhere to the rule of her harmless and placid life on this particular occasion. The "cross" was there--no doubt about it; and it was no longer indefinite in its nature, but very real, and beginning to be very heavy. Under the pressure of its weight Geoffrey's mother was growing indifferent to, even unobservant of, the small worries which had formerly occupied her mind, and furnished the subject-matter of her pardonable little querulousness and complaints--a grievance in no way connected with the tradespeople, and uninfluenced by the "greatest plagues in life"--which no reduction of duties involving cheap groceries, and no sumptuary laws restraining servant-gal-ism within limits of propriety in respect of curls and crinoline, had any power to assuage,--had taken possession of her now, and she fidgeted and fumed no longer, but was haunted by apprehension and sorely troubled.
A somewhat forced liveliness on Til's part, and a marked avoidance of the subject of Geoffrey, of whom, as he had just left them, it would have been natural that the mother and daughter should talk, bore witness to the embarrassment she felt, and increased Mrs. Ludlow's depression. She sat in her accustomed arm-chair, but her head drooped forward and her fingers tapped the arms in an absent manner, which showed her pre-occupation of mind. Til at length took her needle-work, and sat down opposite her mother, in a silence which was interrupted after a considerable interval by the arrival of Charley Potts, who had not altogether ceased to offer clumsy and violently-improbable explanations of his visits, though such were rapidly coming to be unnecessary.
On the present occasion Charley floundered through the preliminaries with more than his usual impulsive awkwardness, and there was that in his manner which caused Til (a quick observer, and especially so in his case) to divine that he had something particular to say to her. If she were right in her conjecture, it was clear that the opportunity must be waited for,--until the nap, in which Mrs. Ludlow invariably indulged in the evening, should have set in. The sooner the conversation settled into sequence, the sooner this desirable event might be expected to take place; so Til talked vigorously, and Charley seconded her efforts. Mrs. Ludlow said little, until, just as Charley began to think the nap was certainly coming, she asked him abruptly if he had seen Geoffrey lately. Miss Til happened to be looking at Charley as the question was put to him, and saw in a moment that the matter he had come to speak to her about concerned her brother.
"No, ma'am," said Chancy; "none of us have seen Geoff lately. Bowker and I have planned a state visit to him; he's as hard to get at as a swell in the Government--with things to give away--what do you call it?--patronage; but we're not going to stand it. We can't do without Geoff. By the bye, how's the youngster, ma'am?"
"The child is very well, I believe," said Mrs. Ludlow, with a shake of the head, which Charley Potts had learned to recognise in connection with the "cross," but which he saw with regret on the present occasion. "I'm afraid theyve heard something," he thought. "But," continued the old lady querulously, "I see little of him, or of Geoffrey either. Things are changed; I suppose it's all right, but it's not easy for a mother to see it; and I don't think any mother would like to be a mere visitor at her own son's house,--not that I am even much of that now, Mr. Potts; for I am sure it's a month 'or more since ever I have darkened the doors of Elm Lodge,--and I shouldn't so much mind it, I hope, if it was for Geoffrey's good; but I can't think it's that--" Here the old lady's voice gave way, and she left off with a kind of sob, which went to Charley's soft heart and filled him with inexpressible confusion. Til was also much taken aback, though she saw at once that her mother had been glad of the opportunity of saying her little say, under the influence of the mortification she had felt at Geoffrey's silence on the subject of her future visits to Elm Lodge. He had, as we have seen, made himself as delightful as possible in every other respect; but he had been strictly reticent about Margaret, and he had not invited his mother and sister to his house. She had been longing to say all this to Til; and now she had got it out, in the presence of a third party, who would "see fair" between her justifiable annoyance and Til's unreasonable defence of her brother. Til covered Charley's embarrassment by saying promptly, in a tone of extreme satisfaction,