an added grace--this utterly
lone woman had not in her heart an iota of tenderness for, or sympathy
with, the glories without, and was as dead to every good thing in life
as though carved from marble by some sculptor, as she really had been
carved from stone, or ice, by nature. As she stood there by the window,
regarding the passers with such a wise and ogreish air that Fox, behind
the blinds in his window opposite, could not but couple her in his
thoughts with some splendid beast of prey--if Mother Blake or the
voluble Rev. Bland could have seen her, the years that had passed would
have been swept away, and in the mature woman and the conscienceless
adventuress would have been recognized the raven of the Detroit cottage,
that, as Lilly Nettleton, in a habit that ravens have, glided
noiselessly about the other sumptuous apartments, gathering together
what pleased its fancy--not forgetting the money which was to have been
used in the cursed church interests, and a gold watch, which the raven
wore to this day--and then, kissing its beak to the heavily sleeping
man, for all the world like a raven, had passed out into the storm and
the night.

In a few moments she retired from the window, and after dressing passed
out upon the street, and went to the falls for a short walk and an
appetite, and then went to the Washington Hall restaurant, where she had
quite frequently taken her meals since she had incidentally learned
that Bristol was a retired Montreal banker, as gossip had it now among
the Spiritualists; and it was evident that persons of that grade of
recommendation were of peculiar interest to Mrs. Winslow. For hours of
dalliance, the aristocratic though impecunious popinjay, Le Compte,
would more than answer; but when it came to a matter of serious work,
and when a new source of income was to be sought, Mrs. Winslow, being a
shrewd and able professor of the art of fascination which secured her an
independent and elegant livelihood, in connection with her ability to
compel a large number of people to pay her for guessing at what had
befallen them and what might befall them, she invariably sought
gentlemen on the shady side of life, with judgment and discretion, who
knew a good thing when they saw it, and who were both able and willing
to carry their bank accounts into their aged knight-errantry.

Lyon was not a handsome man, but he had vast wealth. His weazen face,
his grizzly hair, his repulsive, tobacco-stained mout