There was little else to be got out of the waiter, so we were compelled to wait until we saw Levy. More comic singers, more acrobats, more niggers, and eventually poor little Emmie Talboys!
She was announced under a different pseudonym to that which her mother had adopted; but I had little difficulty in recognizing her. If anything else were wanted to place it beyond a doubt that Mrs. Talboys and Emmie, mother and daughter, had appeared before me that evening, it would have been found in the fact that the wretched bit of faded finery which Madame Bernardini had worn in her bosom, had been transferred to that of the poor trembling little woman who stood before me.
My heart seemed to rise to my throat as I looked upon the old love I had so long lost. The same gentle timid voice bore the accents of the same old pathetic air to my ears—she was singing, the "Banks of Allan Water"—and the same mild appealing face, sadly changed by privation, looked timidly on the audience as she concluded her song. She was received with insolent cheers, such as had greeted her poor mother half an hour before, and as she left the stage she stumbled, in her nervousness, over a nail in the floor, and fell heavily against the wing.
Maxwell and I started up to seek Levy, and we met him at the door, with our ten guineas in shillings and sixpences in his hand.
"Levy," said Maxwell, "who is that young girl who has just gone off?"
"Ah, Mister Maxwell, what a chap you are!"
