Madame Euphrosyne. She was as fascinating as she was fashionable.
She was so graceful, her manners were so pretty, so natural, and so
insinuating! She took so lively an interest in her clients--her very
heart was in their good looks. She was a great favourite of Mrs.
Ferrars, and that lady of Madame Euphrosyne. She assured Mrs. Ferrars
that she was prouder of dressing Mrs. Ferrars than all the other fine
ladies in London together, and Mrs. Ferrars believed her. Unfortunately,
while in the way of making a large fortune, Madame Euphrosyne, who was
romantic, fell in love with, and married, a very handsome and worthless
husband, whose good looks had obtained for him a position in the
company of Drury Lane Theatre, then a place of refined resort, which his
abilities did not justify. After pillaging and plundering his wife for
many years, he finally involved her in such engagements, that she had
to take refuge in the Bankruptcy Court. Her business was ruined, and her
spirit was broken, and she died shortly after of adversity and chagrin.
Her daughter Sylvia was then eighteen, and had inherited with the grace
of her mother the beauty of her less reputable parent. Her figure
was slight and undulating, and she was always exquisitely dressed. A
brilliant complexion set off to advantage her delicate features, which,
though serene, were not devoid of a certain expression of archness. Her
white hands were delicate, her light eyes inclined to merriment, and her
nose quite a gem, though a little turned up.

After their ruin, her profligate father told her that her face was her
fortune, and that she must provide for herself, in which she would find
no difficulty. But Sylvia, though she had never enjoyed the advantage of
any training, moral or religious, had no bad impulses even if she had
no good ones, was of a rather cold character, and extremely prudent. She
recoiled from the life of riot, and disorder, and irregularity, in
which she had unwittingly passed her days, and which had terminated so