The room was small, and so well filled with furniture that there seemed
little space for the long limbs of Alfred Irons, who, however, had
contrived to make himself comfortable by the aid of various cushions
covered with bright-colored sateens. He had lighted a cigar without
thinking it necessary to ask leave, and had even made himself more easy
by putting one leg across a low chair.

Mrs. Sampson was fully aware that in her struggles with life she had
sometimes provoked laughter, often disapproval, and now and then given
rise to positive scandal, yet she was still accustomed to at least a
fair semblance of respect from the men who came to see her; women, it
is to be noted, being not often seen within her walls, since those who
were willing to come she did not care to receive, and those whom she
invited seldom set her name down on their calling lists. Among
themselves, at the clubs or elsewhere, the men speculated more or less
coarsely and unfeelingly upon the foundations of the numerous scandals
which had from time to time blossomed like brilliant and life-sapping
parasites upon the tree of Mrs. Sampson's reputation. Her name, either
spoken boldly or too broadly hinted at to be misunderstood, adorned
many a racy tale told in smoking-rooms after good dinners, or when the
hours had grown small in more senses than one; and her career was made
to point more than one moral drawn for the benefit of the sisters and
daughters of the men who joked and sneered concerning her.

Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson was born of a good old Boston family, to
which she clung with a desperate clutch which her relatives ignored so
far as with dignity they were able. Her father had been a lawyer of
reputation, and his portrait was still displayed prominently in the
daughter's parlor, a circumstance which had given Chauncy Wilson