"She did talk to me sometimes. She seemed lonely and unsettled-like, and I thought it did her good to talk to some wan of her trials. A sore heart, ye know, sir, is all the betther for telling its griefs over to a sympathizing heart," said Annie, apologetically. "Yes," said Keene, a little impatiently, "but you have not told us what her trouble was." "To be sure," answered Annie, good-humoredly. "She had come over some two years since from London with her husband to seek a better fortune, and just when they were so snugly settled down in a dear little home in Brooklyn, and beginning to do well in the world, and wan little baby-bird come to make sunshine in the home, the husband and baby sickened and died, wan after the other, sir, and the poor heart-broken widdy is just going back to her friends almost crazy with the grief of it all," concluded Annie, quite breathless with her long speech. A sparkle of blue lightning flashed in Keene's eyes. "She had lost a child, you said?" "Yes, sir, a pretty boy, scarce a year old. She showed me a photograph of them all--five little ones she had lost, he the last of them all--black-eyed, curly-headed little beauties they were--like their poor father, she said." "And she was inconsolable at the loss of the baby?" "Yes, sir; she fretted for it all the long days, sir--not quite right in her head, she was not, I know, but," said Annie, wiping away a glittering tear from her pink cheek, "it were pitiful like to see her a tossing on the sofa, and moaning, and like as not laughing wildly as she talked of baby Earle, as she called him." "Seemed insane, you think?" asked Keene, in his quick, short manner. "Not like that," answered Annie, with mild wonder at the gentleman's pertinacious curiosity, "but a little out of her mind--you've heard of people being melancholy mad, sir." "Yes, oh, yes," said Keene, "and so you said good-by to this interesting little widow yesterday at about between eleven and twelve o'clock, and she left here and took the steamer for Liverpool?" "She did go away at that time, sir, but I told her good-by earlier as my duties called me to another part of the building. She told nobody good-by. Indeed, all the waiters in the house--she always had a kind word for them, ye see--they all wondered they did not see her go out, and so missed saying good-by to her." "But her baggage, Annie? How did her baggage go down?" "Oh! her passage was taken, and her baggage sent to the steamer, yesterday." "Yes; thank you, Miss Annie, and I believe that is all I want to ask you this evening." Senator Winans supplemented Keene's thanks with a banknote, and Annie went bowing and smiling back to the regions whence she came. The three men looked at each other, Keene breaking the ominous silence that had fallen: