“There is a lady here,” said the old man; and his voice lost some of its wearisome hesitation. “You will account it a very strange matter for me to talk about; but I chanced to know this lady when she was but a little child. If I am rightly informed, she has grown to be a very fine woman, and makes a brilliant figure in the world, with her beauty, and her talents, and her noble way of spending her riches.

I should recognize this lady, so people tell me, by a magnificent flower in her hair.”

“What a rich tinge it gives to his colorless ideas, when he speaks of Zenobia!” I whispered to Hollingsworth. “But how can there possibly be any interest or connecting link between him and her?”

“The old man, for years past,”