two wooden chairs, constitutes its furniture. And while the
policeman goes in search of medical aid, the host of the Trumpeter's
bestirs himself right manfully in the forthcoming of a stimulant. The
stranger, meanwhile, lends himself to the care of the forlorn sufferer
with the gentleness of a woman. He smoothes her pillow, arranges her
dress tenderly, and administers the stimulant with a hand accustomed to
the sick.

A few minutes pass, and the woman seems to revive and brighten up. Mine
host has set a light on the chair, at the side of the cot, and left her
alone with the stranger. Slowly she opens her eyes, and with increasing
anxiety sets them full upon him. Their recognition is mutual. "Madame
Flamingo!" ejaculates the man, grasping her hand.

"Tom Swiggs!" exclaims the woman, burying her face for a second, then
pressing his hand to her lips, and kissing it with the fondness of a
child, as her eyes swim in tears. "How strange to find you thus--"
continues Tom, for truly it is he who sits by the forlorn woman.

"More strange," mutters the woman, shaking her head sorrowfully, "that I
should be brought to this terrible end. I am dying--I cannot last
long--the fever has left me only to die a neglected wretch. Hear
me--hear me, while I tell you the tale of my troubles, that others may
take warning. And may God give me strength. And you--if I have wronged
you, forgive me--it is all I can ask in this world." Here Tom
administers another draught of warm brandy and water, the influence of
which is soon perceptible in the regaining strength of the patient.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

A STORY WITH MANY COUNTERPARTS.

A very common story is this of Madame Flamingo's troubles. It has
counterparts enough, and though they may be traced to a class of society
less notorious than that with which she moved, are generally kept in the
dark chamber of hidden thoughts. We are indeed fast gaining an
unenviable fame for snobbery, for affecting to be what we never can be,
and for our sad imitation of foreign flunkydom, which, finding us rivals
in the realm of its tinsil, begins to button up its coat and look
contemptuously at us over the left shoulder. If, albeit, the result of
that passion for titles and plush (things which the empty-headed of the
old world would seem to have consigned to the empty-headed of the new),
which has of late so singularly discovered itself among our "best-known
families," could be told, it would unfold many a