“Bellevue, Bellevue. Oh! and in the night. Come in; has anything happened? anybody dead, eh?” The door was flung open more generously, and the visitor half pulled, half invited through. CHAPTER IV. MADAME DE MARKE. The room in which Jane Kelly found herself was almost in darkness. Some smouldering embers sent faint red gleams from an open fireplace, over which a strip of coarse bagging had been nailed to keep in the smoke, and by this she could only discover that a poverty-stricken look pervaded everything around her. A small weird-like woman stood but half revealed by the light, gazing sharply upon her. Spite of the darkness, she felt that two keen black eyes were piercing her through and through. All at once the woman stooped, and taking a handful of shavings from an old candle-box that stood on the hearth, flung them upon the embers. A burst of light revealed a smoke-begrimed room, a tattered old bed, some broken chairs tied together with coarse twine, and a rickety table. The sudden light was greeted by a hoarse croaking which came from the direction of the bed; but the flash was so transient that these things left little impression on the girl’s mind, which fastened entirely on the woman herself. Lean, spare, pinched in all her features, grim, unwashed, witch-like, the owner of that room stood in its midst, with the sudden radiance full upon her one minute, and the next she was lost in shadows—all but the eyes, which were still peering into Jane Kelly’s face. “Holy mother! I shall have to light the candle, after all. Waste, waste, nothing but waste. Stand still while I get at a coal of fire. Don’t move, or you might tread on the cat, and she won’t like it.” Here the woman went rattling among some loose articles of crockery on the table, and falling upon her knees before the fireplace, ignited a tallow candle with much puffing and blowing. Then she stood up, held the candle over her head, and searched her visitor from head to foot. “There, there, sit down,” cried the woman, sweeping a lean, gray cat from the rush-bottom of an old chair with one broken arm, and presenting it to her guest in a quick, eager way. “Any news?—anything to tell? Why should you come so late? Why don’t you speak?” “Yes, I’ve got news. It’s all over——” “What? Dead? Really dead? But which of ’em? Not both? That would be too good luck! Not both, eh?” “No, madame, that isn’t just true yet. But to-morrow will tell the story. If it hadn’t been for a woman in the ward, who _would_ give the medicine after I’d forgot it agin and agin, you might have saved the expense of two graves. Something interesting, you know, in burying a baby on its mother’s bosom. “‘We laid you down to sleep, Mary, With your baby on your breast.’ “Sweet song, isn’t it, ma’am? that is what I call touching.”