MRS.

ALFRED DINKS AT HOME.
A new element had forced itself into the life of Hope Wayne, and that was the fate of Abel Newt.

There was something startling in the direct, passionate, personal appeal he had made to her.

She put on her bonnet and furs, for it was Christmas time, and passed the Bowery into the small, narrow street where the smell of the sewer was the chief odor and the few miserable trees cooped up in perforated boxes had at last been released from suffering, and were placidly, rigidly dead.
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.