Fanny and the banker were soon upon the most friendly terms. He invited the ladies to take wine with him. Fanny’s reserve vanished by degrees under its influence, and the compliments of the banker appealed to her vanity. She was soon induced to accompany him to a house in the neighborhood. Fanny had committed herself to the tide of destiny, suffering it to bear her wither it would, and she entered into the house, of the character of which her inexperience allowed her to form no conception. But when they were conducted by an attendant into a bedchamber, she was recalled all at once to the nature of her position, and she blushed deeply; her companion, however, found means to remove her scruples, and she left the house, in company with Miss Jessop, richer indeed in purse, but bankrupt in honor. It was near midnight,—some weeks after Fanny’s fatal resolution—the gay votaries of pleasure were leaving the Jenny Lind Theatre, some few in equipages, but a greater number on foot; beyond the immediate neighborhood of the theatre, however, the bustle was little increased, for the bar-rooms, the Arcade, the El Dorado, the Lafayette, and the Bella Union, received the human tide almost as fast as its waves ebbed from the portico of the theatre. One female form alone lingered under the portico! 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.