The sloppy servant girl was standing upon the area steps with her apron over her head, and blowing her huge red fingers, staring at every thing, and apparently stunned when Hope Wayne stopped and went up the steps.  Hope rang, entered the little parlor and seated herself upon the haircloth sofa.  Her heart ached with the dreariness of the house; but while she was resolving that she would certainly raise her secret allowance to her Cousin Alfred, whether her good friend Lawrence Newt approved of it or not, she saw that the dreariness was not in the small room or the hair sofa, nor in the two lamps with glass drops upon the mantle, but in the lack of that indescribable touch of feminine taste, and tact, and tenderness, which create comfort and grace wherever they fall, and make the most desolate chambers to blossom with cheerfulness.  Hope felt as she glanced around her that money could not buy what was wanting.

Mrs. Alfred Dinks presently entered.  Hope Wayne had rarely met her since the season at Saratoga when Fanny had captured her prize.  She saw that the black-eyed, clever, resolute girl of those days had grown larger and more pulpy, and was wrapped in a dingy morning wrapper.  Her hair was not smooth, her hands were not especially clean; she had that dull carelessness, or unconsciousness of personal appearance, which seemed to Hope only the parlor aspect of the dowdiness that had run entirely to seed in the sloppy servant girl upon the area steps.

Hope Wayne put out her hand, which Fanny listlessly took.  There was nothing very hard, or ferocious, or defiant in her manner, as Hope had expected—­there was only a weariness and indifference, as if she had been worsted in some kind of struggle.  She did not even seem to be excited by seeing Hope Wayne in her house, but merely said, “Good-morning,” and then sank quietly upon the sofa, as if she had said every thing she had to say.

“I came to ask you if you know any thing about Abel?” said Hope.

“No; nothing in particular,” replied Fanny; “I believe he’s going to Congress; but I never see him or hear of him.”

“Doesn’t Alfred see him?”

“He used to meet him at Thiel’s; but Alfred doesn’t go there much now.  It’s too fine for poor gentlemen.  I remember some time ago I saw he had a black eye, and he said that he and my ‘d——­ brother Abel,’ as he elegantly expressed it, had met somewhere the night before, and Abel was drunk and gave him the lie, and they fought it out.  I think, by-the-way, that’s the last I’ve heard of brother Abel.”

There was a slight touch of the old manner in the tone with which Fanny ended her remark; after which she relapsed into the previous half-apathetic condition.

“Fanny, I wish I could do something for Abel.”

Fanny Dinks looked at Hope Wayne with an incredulous smile, and said,

“I thought once you would marry him; and so did he, I fancy.”

“What does he do? and how can I reach him?” asked Hope, entirely disregarding Fanny’s remark.