"There is some one here," he began, "whom you may like to question." Thinking it to be the woman of the house, I advanced, though somewhat reluctantly, when a sight met my eyes that made me fall back in astonishment and dread. It was the figure of a woman dressed all in gray, with a dark-blue veil drawn tightly over her features. "Good God!" I murmured, "who is this?" "The woman who brought her here," observed the officer. "Farrell, there, has just found her." And then I perceived darkly looming in the now heavy dusk the form of another man, whose unconscious and business-like air proclaimed him to be a member of the force. "Her name is Sophie Preston," the officer continued, motioning to the woman to throw up her veil. "She is a hard character, and some day will have to answer for her many crimes." Meanwhile, I stood rooted to the ground; the name, the face were strange, and neither that of her whom I had inwardly accused of this wrong. "I should like to ask the woman--" I commenced, but here my eyes fell upon her form. It was tall and it was full, but it was not by any means handsome. A fearful possibility crossed my mind. Approaching the woman closely, I modified my question. "Are you the person who took this young lady from her boarding place?" I asked. "Yes, sir," was the reply, uttered in smooth but by no means cultivated tones. "And by what arts did you prevail upon this young and confiding creature to leave her comfortable home and go out into the streets with you?" She did not speak, she smiled. O heaven! what depths of depravity opened before me in that smile! "Answer!" the officer cried. "Well, sir, I told her," she now replied, "that I was such and such a relative, grandmother, I think I said; and being a dutiful child--" But I was now up close to her side, and, leaning to her very ear I interrupted her. "Tell me on which side of the hall was the parlor into which you went." "The right," she answered, without the least show of hesitation. "Wrong," I returned; "you have never been there." She looked frightened. "O, sir," she whispered, "hush! hush! If you know--" And there she stopped; and instantly cried aloud, in a voice that warned me I should make nothing by pressing my suspicions at this time and in this place, "I lured the young lady from her home and I brought her here. If it is a criminal act I shall have to answer for it. We all run such risks now and then." To me, with my superior knowledge of all the mysteries which lay behind this pitiful tragedy, her meaning was evident. Whether she had received payment sufficient for the punishment possibly awaiting her, or whether she had been frightened into assuming the responsibility of another, she was evidently resolved to sustain her role of abductress to the end.