the gorgeous!” I exclaimed. “And how have you prevailed with such a woman to work in this squalid element?”

“Through no base methods, as you seem to suspect,” he answered; “but by addressing whatever is best and noblest in her.”

Hollingsworth was looking on the ground.

But, as he often did so, — generally, indeed, in his habitual moods of thought, — I could not judge whether it was from any special unwillingness now to meet my eyes. What it was that dictated my next question, I cannot precisely say. Nevertheless, it rose so inevitably into my mouth, and, as it were, asked itself so involuntarily, that there must needs have been an aptness in it.

“What is to become of Priscilla?”