"Why, Doctor, I am glad to see you!" she cried, as Doctor Arthur Conroy entered her room; "I haven't clapped eyes upon you for a dog's age. Why, bless me, how changed you are!" As Conroy flung his cloak upon a chair, and advancing to the light, seated himself opposite the Madam, it was evident that he was indeed changed. His eyes were dull and heavy, his cheeks bloated; the marks of days and nights spent in sensual excess, were upon every lineament of his once noble face. A sad, a terrible change! Can this man who sits before us, with his coat buttoned to the chin, and his heavy eyes rolling vacantly in his bloated countenance, be the same Arthur Conroy whom we first beheld in the lonely hour of his student vigil, his eyes dilating with a noble ambition, his forehead stamped with thought, with genius? "I am changed," he said sullenly and with a thick utterance; "let me have some brandy." The Madam, without a word, produced a bottle and a glass. Conroy filled the glass half-full, and drank it, undiluted with water, and without removing the glass from his lips. And then his faded eyes began to flash and his cheek to glow. It was the most melancholy kind of intemperance--that which drinks alone, and drinks in silence, and, instead of rousing the social feelings, or the grotesque fancies of drunken mirth, calls up the images of the past, and bids them feed upon the soul. "Good brandy that! It warms the blood!" "Why, Conroy, I have not seen you since you brought Godiva here, and that is a year and I don't know how many months ago." "May God,"--he ended the sentence with an awful imprecation upon the very name of Godiva. And his face grew wild with hatred. "Why I thought she was a favorite of yours, or you of hers," said the Madam. "By ----! I wish I had buried my knife in her heart, as she lay on the dissecting table before me!" he cried, his voice hoarse with emotion. "Look at me! When first I met that woman I was studious, ambitious; the thought of my mother and two sisters, who depended upon my efforts, stirred me into superhuman exertion. Well!--It is not _quite_ a _century_ since I met that woman, and look at me now--a gambler--a drunkard; yes," he struck the table with his fist--"Arthur Conroy is come to that! My mother dead, of a broken heart, and my sisters, well!--my sisters--" As he tried to choke down his emotion, his features worked as with a spasm. "Well! never mind!--and the accursed woman, whom I brought to your house, in order to kill the fruits of her passion,--she is the cause of all,--" The light which left the greater part of the room in shadow, fell strongly over the florid face of the Madam, manifesting vague astonishment; and the flushed visage of Conroy, working with violent emotions.