“My name will probably be familiar to you. I am Mrs. Lindsay.”
“I am glad to see you, madam. Will you be seated?”
She sat down, and the lawyer regarded with interest the client whom he now saw for the first time. She was still young, less than forty probably, and, though her face bore the impress of sorrow, she was still beautiful.
“I suppose you have no news for me,” she said.
“I am sorry to say that I have as yet no trace of the child. Margaret Walsh is on the lookout for her, and, as you have made it worth her while, I do not doubt that she will eventually find her for you.”
“Do you think my child is still in the city?” asked Mrs. Lindsay, anxiously.
“I have no doubt of it. A child, bred as she has been, does not often leave the city voluntarily, unless in the case of those children who are from time to time carried away to homes in the West, through the agency of the Children’s Aid Society.”
“But may she not be of the number of these?”
“I thought it possible, and have accordingly inquired particularly of the officers of the society whether any child answering to her description has been under their charge, and I am assured that this is not the case. She is probably earning a living for herself somewhere in the streets, though we cannot tell in what way, or in what part of the city. Having run away from Mrs. Walsh, whom I suspect she did not like, she probably keeps out of the way, to avoid falling again into her hands.”
“It is terrible to think that my dear child is compelled to wander about the streets homeless, and no doubt often suffering severe privations,” said Mrs. Lindsay, with a sigh.