of the
Salvation Army at a slum post down on Berry Hill, where Nora Costello
was to speak--"

"Oh, why didn't you let me go too?"

"You shall go if you like sometime; but I am glad you were not there
to-night, for there was a fire, and something near a panic--"

Winifred turned white and moved nearer to him.

"Don't be alarmed!" he said; "nothing happened. The fire was soon put
out, and people settled back in their seats. But I grew restless, and
concluded not to wait for Brady; so I started to walk up alone--"

"Alone?" echoed Winifred, "through that quarter! Why, Nora says it is
as bad as Whitechapel."

"Perhaps," said Flint, with a nervous laugh; "but my walk was entirely
uneventful till I reached our own highly respectable part of the city.
As I was turning into Fifth Avenue, out of one of the side streets
above Washington Square, I saw a girl looking up at the houses. As I
came along she stopped to speak to me, and to my amazement I found it
was Tilly Marsden."

"_Tilly Marsden?_"

"Yes, she had come down to spend Thanksgiving here in the city. She
had been expecting, it seems, to go to a hotel; but a woman on the
train gave her the address of some friend, and she was looking up this
unknown landlady when I came along."

"Little fool!" said Winifred, with finely feminine exasperation.

"She is--beyond a doubt she is; but still--"

"But still," said Winifred, with a vanishing smile, "you naturally
have more sympathy with her folly than I have." (At this moment
Winifred had forgotten the charge of lack of sympathy which she had
brought against the man before her three months ago.) "The question
is, of course, what is to be done with her?"

Flint felt an immense sense of relief at Winifred's practical words,
which seemed to remove the situation from the element of tragedy to
rather sordid commonplace.

"That's it exactly," he said helplessly. "I thought of taking her to
Nora Costello."

"That would not do at all," said Winifred, positively. "I am
disappointed in you. If you had trusted to my proffer of friendship
yesterday, you would have brought her to me."

"I--I did," hesitated Flint; "she is in the rear room there. But the
more I think of it, the more I feel as if I could not have her here
near you. She is--"

"You need not tell me what Tilly Marsden is," Winifred interrupted. "I
know her of old. She is silly and pert, and cheaply sensational; but
she is not vicious, and if she were, our duty