“What did the girl do?” interrupted one of the men.

“Oh, yes,” said Travers, hastily; “that’s the best part of it; that’s the plot—­the girl.  Now, who do you think the girl was?” He looked around the table proudly, with the air of a man who is sure of his climax.

“How should I know?” one man said.  “Some actress going home from the theatre, maybe—­”

“No,” said Travers.  “It’s a girl you all know.”  He paused impressively.  “What would you say now,” he went on, dropping his voice, “if I was to tell you it was Eleanore Cuyler?”

The three men looked up suddenly and at each other with serious concern.  There was a moment’s silence.  “Well,” said one of them, softly, “that is rather nasty.”

“Now, what I want to know is,” Travers ran on, elated at the sensation his narrative had made—­“what I want to know is, where is that girl’s mother, or sister, or brother?  Have they anything to say?  Has any one anything to say?  Why, one of Eleanore Cuyler’s little fingers is worth more than all the East and West Side put together; and she is to be allowed to run risks like—­”

Wainwright pushed his chair back, and walked out of the room.

“See that fellow, quick,” said Travers; “that’s Wainwright who writes plays and things.  He’s a thoroughbred sport, too, and he just got back from London.  It’s in the afternoon papers.”

Miss Cuyler was reading to Mrs. Lockmuller, who was old and bedridden and cross.  Under the influence of Eleanore’s low voice she frequently went to sleep, only to wake and demand ungratefully why the reading had stopped.

Miss Cuyler was very tired.  It was close and hot, and her head ached a little, and the prospect across the roofs of the other tenements was not cheerful.  Neither was the thought that she was to spend her summer making working-girls happy on a farm on Long Island.

She had grown sceptical as to working-girls, and of the good she did them—­or any one else.  It was all terribly dreary and forlorn, and she wished she could end it by putting her head on some broad shoulder and by being told that it didn’t matter, and that she was not to blame if the world would be wicked and its people unrepentant and ungrateful.  Corrigan, on the third floor, was drunk again and promised trouble.  His voice ascended to the room in which she sat, and made her nervous, for she was feeling the reaction from the excitement of the night before.  There were heavy footsteps on the stairs, and a child’s shrill voice cried, “She’s in there,” and, suspecting it might be Corrigan, she looked up fearfully, and then the door opened and she saw the most magnificent and the handsomest being in the world.  His magnificence was due to a Bond Street tailor, who had shown how very small a waist will go with very broad shoulders, and if he was handsome, that was the tan of a week at sea.  But it was not the tan, nor the unusual length of his coat, that Eleanore saw, but the eager, confident look in his face—­and all she could say was, “Oh, Mr. Wainwright,” feebly.