Sister Slocum hesitates.  Social slavery will not sound just right, she says to her herself.  She must have a term more musical, and less grating to the ear.  A smile flashes across her countenance, her gold-framed eye-glasses vibrate in her fingers:  “Well!  I was going to say, their social arrangements,” she pursues.

The assembly is suddenly thrown into a fit of excitement.  Lady Swiggs is seen trembling from head to foot, her yellow complexion changing to pale white, her features contorting as with pain, and her hand clutching at her pocket.  “O heavens!” she sighs, “all is gone, gone, gone:  how vain and uncertain are the things here below.”  She drops, fainting, into the arms of Sister Slocum, who has overset the wise man in the spectacles, in her haste to catch the prostrate form.  On a bench the august body is laid.  Fans, water, camphor, hartshorn, and numerous other restoratives are brought into use.  Persons get in each other’s way, run every way but the right way, causing, as is common in such cases, very unnecessary alarm.  The stately representative of the great Swiggs family lies motionless.  Like the last of our chivalry, she has nothing left her but a name.

A dash or two of cold water, and the application of a little hartshorn, and that sympathy so necessary to the fainting of distinguished people-proves all-efficient.  A slight heaving of the bosom is detected, the hands-they have been well chaffed-quiver and move slowly, her face resumes its color.  She opens her eyes, lays her hand solicitously on Sister Slocum’s arm:  “It must be the will of Heaven,” she lisps, motioning her head, regretfully; “it cannot now be undone—­”

“Sister! sister! sister!” interrupts Sister Slocum, grasping her hand, and looking inquiringly in the face of the recovering woman, “is it an affection of the heart?-where is the pain?-what has befallen you?  We are all so sorry!”

“It was there, there, there!  But it is gone now.”  Regaining her consciousness, she lays her hand nervously upon her pocket, and pursues:  “Oh! yes, sister, it was there when I entered that vile place, as you call it.  What am I to do?  The loss of the money does not so much trouble my mind.  Oh! dear, no.  It is the thought of going home deprived of the means of aiding these noble institutions.”

Had Lady Swiggs inquired into the character of the purchaser of old Dolly she might now have become conscious of the fact, that whatever comes of evil seldom does good.  The money she had so struggled to get together to aid her in maintaining her hypocrisy, was the result of crime.  Perhaps it were better the wretch purloined it, than that the fair name of a noble institution be stained with its acceptance.  Atonement is too often sought to be purchased with the gold got of infamy.