Raymond had never visited the dwellings of want, and the scene that now presented itself struck him to the heart.  The floor was sunk in many places; the walls ragged and bare—­the ceiling weather-stained—­a tattered bed stood in the corner; there were but two chairs in the room, and a rough broken table, on which was a light in a tin candlestick;—­yet in the midst of such drear and heart sickening poverty, there was an air of order and cleanliness that surprised him.  The thought was fleeting; for his attention was instantly drawn towards the inhabitant of this wretched abode.  It was a female.  She sat at the table; one small hand shaded her eyes from the candle; the other held a pencil; her looks were fixed on a drawing before her, which Raymond recognized as the design presented to him.  Her whole appearance awakened his deepest interest.  Her dark hair was braided and twined in thick knots like the head-dress of a Grecian statue; her garb was mean, but her attitude might have been selected as a model of grace.  Raymond had a confused remembrance that he had seen such a form before; he walked across the room; she did not raise her eyes, merely asking in Romaic, who is there?  “A friend,” replied Raymond in the same dialect.  She looked up wondering, and he saw that it was Evadne Zaimi.  Evadne, once the idol of Adrian’s affections; and who, for the sake of her present visitor, had disdained the noble youth, and then, neglected by him she loved, with crushed hopes and a stinging sense of misery, had returned to her native Greece.  What revolution of fortune could have brought her to England, and housed her thus?

Raymond recognized her; and his manner changed from polite beneficence to the warmest protestations of kindness and sympathy.  The sight of her, in her present situation, passed like an arrow into his soul.  He sat by her, he took her hand, and said a thousand things which breathed the deepest spirit of compassion and affection.  Evadne did not answer; her large dark eyes were cast down, at length a tear glimmered on the lashes.  “Thus,” she cried, “kindness can do, what no want, no misery ever effected; I weep.”  She shed indeed many tears; her head sunk unconsciously on the shoulder of Raymond; he held her hand:  he kissed her sunken tear-stained cheek.  He told her, that her sufferings were now over:  no one possessed the art of consoling like Raymond; he did not reason or declaim, but his look shone with sympathy; he brought pleasant images before the sufferer; his caresses excited no distrust, for they arose purely from the feeling which leads a mother to kiss her wounded child; a desire to demonstrate in every possible way the truth of his feelings, and the keenness of his wish to pour balm into the lacerated mind of the unfortunate.  As Evadne regained her composure, his manner became even gay; he sported with the idea of her poverty.  Something told him that it was not its real evils that lay heavily at her heart, but the debasement and disgrace attendant on