Zuleime had been placed by Georgia under the care of a poor woman, the wife of a carver and gilder, who had occasionally worked for her father. And as long as the funds of the belle had held out, the trifling expenses of such poor board and lodging had been regularly paid. But when the syren was reduced to support her own extravagance entirely by credit, founded upon the false reputation of wealth—her small remittances to her protégé, or rather her victim, ceased. Zuleime was afraid to seek her, afraid to write to her—there was nothing she feared more than discovery, and the recognition of her hand-writing on the superscription of a letter might have led to that. It was long after the death of her father before she heard of it—nor then did she hear any of the particulars of time, place or circumstance. The fact came to her knowledge irregularly, through the report of the transcendant charms and conquests of his beautiful young widow. A long and dangerous illness was the result of this sudden news. It was some weeks after her recovery before the poor people of the house, who had long despaired of getting anything for her board, could find it in their kind hearts to ask her to seek another home. And even then they sent a sigh after the desolate young widow—the child who went forth carrying in her arms another child. And how she lived during the interval between that and the period at which I shall again introduce her to you, I cannot tell. Sometimes a little fine needle-work came to her hands; sometimes a spell of want, reaching almost to starvation; then a little assistance from neighbors; and a little going in debt to shopkeepers. And then she always lodged with the poor. And the poor seldom persecute the poor; remember that the needy family who first sheltered her, had been for months at the sole expense of her food, lodging, and long illness—and yet they had never reproached or persecuted her for unpaid debts—though they scarcely refrained from reproaching themselves for sending her away. In a quiet, back street, mostly inhabited by very humble people, in the middle of the square, and fronting immediately upon the battered pavement, stood an old two-story brick house, occupied by a poor cabinet-maker and old furniture dealer. The lower front room was used as the ware-room, and crowded and piled up with every description of miserably dilapidated household furniture, apparently good for nothing else under the sun but kindling wood, and scarcely worth splitting up for that. Old worm-eaten, carved mahogany bureaus and bedsteads; tables without legs or leaves; chairs without backs; cradles without bottoms or rockers; clocks wanting faces; beaufets wanting doors; sofas minus arms; smoky pictures without frames; and tarnished frames without pictures; worm-eaten cabinets, and mildewed looking-glasses; broken pots, pans and kettles; and mismatched crockery-ware in any quantity.