he newspaper paragraphs that extolled Henderson's domestic
virtue and his generosity to his family, and show them to her lord, with
a queer smile on her face. Miss Tavish, in the nervous consciousness of
fleeting years, was she not still waiting, dashing here and there like a
bird in a net for the sort of freedom, audacious as she was, that seemed
denied her? She was still beautiful, everybody said, and she was sought
and flattered, because she was always merry and good-natured. Why should
Van Dam, speaking of women, say that there were horses that had been set
up, and checked up and trained, that held their heads in an aristocratic
fashion, moved elegantly, and showed style, long after the spirit had
gone out of them? And Jack himself, happily married, with a comfortable
income, why was life getting flat to him? What sort of career was it
that needed the aid of Carmen and the serpentine dancer? And why not,
since it is absolutely necessary that the world should be amused?

We are in no other world when we enter the mean tenement in the alley
off Rivington Street. Here also is the life of the town. The room is
small, but it contains a cook-stove, a chest of drawers, a small table,
a couple of chairs, and two narrow beds. On the top of the chest are
a looking-glass, some toilet articles, and bottles of medicine. The
cracked walls are bare and not clean. In one of the beds are two
children, sleeping soundly, and on the foot of it is a middle-aged
woman, in a soiled woolen gown with a thin figured shawl drawn about her
shoulders, a dirty cap half concealing her frowzy hair; she looks tired
and worn and sleepy. On the other bed lies a girl of twenty years, a
woman in experience. The kerosene lamp on the stand at the head of the
bed casts a spectral light on her flushed face, and the thin arms that
are restlessly thrown outside the cover. By the bedside sits the doctor,
patient, silent, and watchful. The doctor puts her hand caressingly
on that of the girl. It is hot and dry. The girl opens her eyes with a
startled look, and says, feebly:

"Do you think he will come?"

"Yes, dear, presently. He never fails."

The girl closed her eyes again, and there was silence. The dim rays of
the lamp, falling upon the doctor, revealed the figure of a woman of
less than medium size, perhaps of the age of thirty or more, a plain
little body, you would have said, who paid the slightest possible
attention to her dress, and when she went a