The girl's heart sank as she looked around.
Could she make this place her home again? Its very atmosphere, redolent with tobacco smoke and the strong odor of vegetables, took her breath away.
Ah! it was very hard for this girl, whose only fortune was a dower of poverty, and who had had a slight taste of wealth and refinement, to come back to the old life again and fall into the drudgery of other days.
She could not refuse her uncle when he pleaded to know where she went and where she had been since the night he had driven her, in his mad frenzy, out into the world.
He listened in wonder. The girl's story almost seemed like a fairy tale to him. But as he listened to the ending of it—surely the saddest story that ever was told by girlish lips—of how she had left the Varrick mansion, and
