When the door had closed upon her seducer, Fanny threw herself upon the bed, and hiding her countenance in the clothes, burst into a flood of bitter and scalding tears. Oh, how agonizing were the reminiscence, how bitter the reflections, evoked by the accidental meeting with the man to whom she owed all the unhappiness she ever knew. The thought of her home, of the poor, but honest parents whom she could never look in the face again, of the companions of her childhood, in the village of her birth, and from these subjects of reflection her thoughts wandered to the beginnings of her ill-starred acquaintance with Blodget, and the sudden dissolving of the dream of happiness she had had, so bright and blissful, but, alas, so transient. Her tears ceased to flow, without having brought her any relief, and seating herself by the bedside, she grew by degrees more calm, but it was an unnatural calmness, not the tranquility which speaks of peace within, but a mere lull in the tempest of human passions. She glanced at the glittering coin upon the floor, but she felt that to pick it up and appropriate it to her own use, would be to accept a money compensation for her wrongs, and though husbands in the upper classes of society are accustomed to accept such compensation from the seducers of their wives, yet the purer soul of that crushed violet of the pavement, revolted at the thought. Yet must she have money; she was penniless, and for her there was no alternative between a life of infamy and degradation, and the unblessed grave of the suicide. Moreover she could not bear to be alone with her heart-crushing brain-searing, maddening thoughts: she felt that she must fly from them, or, madness or suicide would be the result. The thought of surrendering herself to the embraces of a stranger was less repugnant to her mind, in the mood which had come upon her, than that of selling to her seducer for money the favors which he had once enjoyed through her love; if she must sin, she resolved that it should not be with him, to those arms she had originally gone pure and chaste. Leaving the money upon the floor, she went down stairs, darted past a stout red-faced old woman in a faded silk dress, whom she met in the passage, in order to avoid an explanation, and rushed through the miry court into the street. A misty rain was still falling, and there were few persons in the streets, but she knew there were yet plenty of loungers and revellers in the taverns about Commercial Street, and thitherward, she retraced her steps. She had nearly reached the crossing of Montgomery Street, when she saw a young man come out of the corner bar-room and walk down towards the wharf, with a reeling gait, as if under the influence of liquor. Thinking that he might be easily induced to accompany her home, she followed him, but before she could overtake him he entered another bar-room.