She was a lovely dark-eyed girl, rather below the middle height of woman, and wore a silk dress, faded and stained, a mantle of the same material, creased and much worn, and a velvet bonnet modish in form, but worn and faded, and adorned with a black feather in the last stage of decay. Her complexion was dark, and dissipation and late hours had not yet banished the last tinge of rose from her cheeks; her bright eyes were shaded by long jetty lashes, and her black hair was glossy as the pinion of the raven; her lips seemed formed of coral by the art of the turner, and her form was symmetrical and attractive in the highest degree. A little while before those dark eyes had beamed with simulated passion, and those vermeil lips had been wreathed with the most winning and wanton smiles; but as the last hack drove away from the front of the theatre, the expression of the girl’s countenance, which seemed to have been stamped there as with a searing iron, by the vivid consciousness of shame and degradation. The change was like the removal of the garland and veil from the skull of the skeleton guest at the banquet of the old Egyptians. A light rain was beginning to fall, the pavement was becoming wet and clammy, and the girl looked down with a sigh and a shudder at her thin shoes.
Then she stepped upon the pavement, shivered for a moment on the edge and crossed the slippery street, to where the large lamp over the door of a large cafe threw its yellow glare upon the wet sidewalk. A tall, well-shaped man came out of the tavern at the moment she approached the door, and between him and the young girl there passed glances of recognition.
‘Blodget!’ she exclaimed, in a low gasping tone.
‘Ah! why it is little Fanny!’ said he, in a tone between a recognition and surprise.
‘Yes,’ returned the young girl, with a look at once appealing and reproachful, ‘It is Fanny—your victim.’
‘Humph,’ said Blodget, averting his countenance from the girl’s earnest gaze, and biting his lip. ‘Have you been looking for me?’ he inquired, after a moment’s pause, and still without looking upon the girl’s wan countenance, as if he felt that her looks would reproach him, even though she uttered not a word.
‘No,’ returned Fanny. ‘I knew not that you were in this city. I am glad, Mr. Blodget, to perceive that you have still so much virtue left, that you cannot look upon the face of the girl you have wronged and deceived, that you shrink from the contemplation of your work of evil.’
‘Don’t let us quarrel,’ said Blodget, in a low voice, and with an evident uneasiness of manner. ‘Come in, and we will go up stairs, and have a bottle of wine.’
‘Never, with you, Blodget!’ exclaimed Fanny, energetically.
‘Your baseness has reduced me to a depth of degradation to which I would not at one time have believed possible for me to fall, but never will I sit down in a public room with the author of my ruin.’