She was a very pretty girl, though her complexion was something wan, and her eyelids were rather tinged with pink; but if these appearances detracted something from her prettiness, what did they not add to the interest and the sympathy raised in the beholder? They told of early rising and midnight toil, the rapid wearing out of young and beautiful human life, so that thousands of thoughtless beings of her own sex might set off to advantage their facial attractions--_CHEAPLY_. Not to lengthen this digression--for we shall know much more of this young damsel by and by--Lotte Clinton, for that was her name, hearing the cry of young Vivian for water, entered the apartment, prepared to offer her services if they were likely to be required. She saw Flora Wilton lying in the arms of Hal Vivian, whose handsome face she recognised in an instant, for she had often observed it from her garret window upturned to the house in which she dwelt, though his look reached not so high as where she sat peering behind her mignionette and nasturtiums. Hal knew her not, but just now she made her appearance, to his conception, as an angel newly come from Paradise. He turned his eager eyes upon her. “Miss Wilton is in deep affliction,” he said, quickly, “she has fainted; will you be so good as to bring some water?” “Place her in a chair,” said Lotte, softly, “she will be better there--she will have more air. I will run for water, and my smelling salts. Sometimes at night, I grow faint and dizzy, and cannot see my work, and they relieve me then wonderfully.” She said this as she hurried out of the room. Poor girl! She had but too often had occasion to use the stimulant for the purpose she named. Vivian almost unconsciously felt a reluctance to resign his beautiful burden, but he could not help seeing that the course proposed by Lotte was the proper one to be adopted; therefore he placed the yet lifeless Flora, with the tenderest carefulness, upon a chair, and supported her drooping head upon his breast. Lotte, swift of foot, had not been a minute obtaining the ammoniacal salts and a teacup with water in it. She did not possess a tumbler, for she could not afford herself beer, and the water she took at her dinner, or supper--when she could afford to indulge in the latter luxury--was as sweet to her out of a cup as a glass. She set to work, as a woman almost instinctively proceeds in these matters. While she had all that tender sympathy and commiseration which the condition of Flora could elicit from any one imbued with a generous susceptibility, she was endowed also with that species of calm self-possession and firm collectedness, so valuable in emergencies where human life is at stake. She set Vivian to work bathing with the cool water the white temples from which his trembling fingers had parted the long waving hair, while she herself applied the ammonia to the nostrils of Flora, and chafed her palms when the inhalation had done its work.