“I can’t, my dear, for now I remember I never heard her name, nor your pa’s, neither. You always went by the name of Lyndon, and was considered their child, so you will have to go on calling yourself Lyndon till you find out better. Maybe your ma wasn’t a good woman, anyway, or she wouldn’t had to be divorced.”
Cruel was the parting between Jessie and the little ones, but with kisses and tears, and promises to come again, the desolate girl was hurried away to her fate—every link broken between her and the past, her brain on fire, her heart aching, her future a chaos that no hope could pierce.
“If I could only find my mother!” she sighed to Mrs. Ryan.
“Sure, darlint, don’t fix your heart on her, for she must have been a bad woman indade, or your father wouldn’t have stole ye away and put ye in his sister’s care. Arrah, now, I’m thinking of what the dispossess agent said about knowing of a good place for ye to stay as parlormaid. And good luck to ye, darlint; there he is in front of the tiniment now, having the old sticks of your furniture moved, bad cess to his eyes! But then ag’in, ’tain’t his fault. He was sint by the landlord to do it, and can’t help himself, so why should we be hard on him, thin! Och, if you plaze, sir, we would like to have the address of the good lady as you said would take Jessie for a parlormaid.”
The agent’s face beamed with surprise and delight, and, hastily drawing a card from his pocket, he presented it, saying:
“There’s the address, and just tell the lady I sent you, and I know she will give Miss Lyndon the place,” beaming on the girl in a way that made her shrink and shudder.
“Why, ’tis the old fortune teller in the next street,” said Mrs. Ryan, surveying the dingy card that read:
“Know your fate and fortune. Consult Madame Barto, scientific palmist, No. 16A West Twenty-third Street. Hours between ten and four daily. Fee one dollar.”
CHAPTER III.
A YOUNG GIRL’S FIRST THOUGHT.
Madame Barto’s ideas of a parlormaid seemed rather confused, for her gloomy little brick house had no occupants save herself and Jessie, and before business hours in the morning she and Jessie did up all the household work, after which they separated, madame to sit in her dingy parlor and read detective stories in the intervals of waiting for customers, and Jessie to wait in a tiny anteroom off the hall to answer the doorbell.