Savage bowed, and answered that it needed no words to convince him that she spoke truly. The young man laid his hand on the back of a chair as he spoke; but removing her foot from the ottoman, she motioned him to sit there. “Forgive me, I dare not presume,” he said. “Once at your feet, I might never be able to leave them.” Miss Eliza looked down modestly, and a sigh disturbed the geranium leaves on her bosom. “You sent for me, Miss Halstead?” said Savage, a little embarrassed by these gentle demonstrations. “Sent for you? Oh, yes! But let us waive the subject a little longer; it will be soon enough for the serpent to creep into our paradise when it cannot be kept out.” She glanced upward, and Savage, following her eyes, saw the god of love hovering over them. Spite of himself a smile broke all over his face. Miss Eliza had reached a phase in her programme which required a drooping of the eyelashes, and she lost the smile while performing her part. “We were speaking of age,” she said, dreamily; “not that it is a subject which can, as yet, interest either of us; but I sometimes think that the lightness of selfish enjoyment and surface life of mere youth is more unendurable than age itself. There is my niece down stairs now——” “What! Georgie? She is the very embodiment of all that is sweet and lovable in youth. You cannot say more in her praise than I will indorse heart and soul,” cried Savage, whose heart was brimful of gratitude for the young creature who, all unknown to him, was weeping so bitterly in the room below. “If you wish to depicture all the grace and bloom of youth in its perfection, a lovelier object could not be found.” Miss Eliza moved restlessly in her chair, clasped her hand fiercely in the folds of her dress, and choked back the venom that burned for utterance with the resolution of a martyr. “You—you think so? Well, yes; the same roof shelters us, and magnanimity is always a virtue. Georgiana is, as you say, very lovely; and no one can dispute that she is young—verdantly so, I fear. Why, Mr. Savage, you would hardly believe it, but she—in her innocence, I will not say obstinacy—is always doing the most extraordinary things. Why, this very day she has been in one of the most extraordinary neighborhoods, absolutely disreputable, and visiting a house—really, I cannot tell you how low her associates sometimes are. I expostulated with her, reasoned with her; but it was of no earthly use; go she would, and go she did.” “But where did she go? I do not understand.” “You remember that night when you first knelt at my feet before an admiring multitude. Oh! shall I ever forget it! There was a young person admitted into social communication with the choice few, by what influence we will not now wait to question, who was absolutely raked up from the very dregs of society—a poor sewing-girl. Worse than that, a creature brought up in one of those loathsome dens called tenement-houses; a low bred——”