“I think,” he said, “I will lay my turban on my wonted altar of offerings; there, at any rate, it would be certain to find favour; no grisette has a more facile faculty of acceptance. Strange! for after all, I know she is a girl of family.”

“But you don’t know her education, Dr. John,” said I. “Tossed about all her life from one foreign school to another, she may justly proffer the plea of ignorance in extenuation of most of her faults. And then, from what she says, I believe her father and mother were brought up much as she has been brought up.”

“I always understood she had no fortune; and once I had pleasure in the thought,” said he.