“Oh! no—thank God! my mother is alive—and I know her now!” ejaculated Agnes, with all the enthusiasm of a strongly reviving affection—a powerfully resuscitating devotion for the parent whom she had so lately discovered.
“But where is your mother now?” enquired Mrs. Mortimer.
“Ah! that I know not!” replied Agnes. “And this reminds me,” she exclaimed after a few moments’ pause, “that you must take me back to the good kind ladies in Stamford Street, that I may remain there until my mother shall come to fetch me away to the new home which she has promised to prepare for me.”
“Who are those good ladies?” asked Mrs. Mortimer.
“Their name is Theobald, and they live in Stamford Street,” responded the artless girl. “You may know the house—or at least the driver of the vehicle can find it out, when I describe it as being situated fourth from the corner of the Blackfriars’ Road, and next to three deserted—dilapidated—sinister-looking houses——”
“Ah! then you must have found your way from the dwelling of your friends into one of those ruined places,” thought Mrs. Mortimer. “But I am really at a loss, my dear young lady, to comprehend all you tell me,” she said aloud.
“Before I give you the necessary explanations to enable you to understand it all,” said Agnes, “will you inform me which road the vehicle is pursuing?”
“I am taking you to a place of safety, my dear girl,” responded Mrs. Mortimer.
“A place of safety!” repeated Agnes, her countenance assuming an expression of deep anxiety: “am I, then, in any danger? and in what does the peril consist?”
“I know not, my love,” answered the old woman, speaking in the kindest tone of voice. “I only judge by the condition in which I found you—the circumstances which threw us this night together—and the observations which have fallen from your lips, that you were indeed in a state of extreme danger.”