We must now retrace our steps in order to introduce a different phase of life in the Golden City.

Among the many hundreds of passengers who landed one drizzly day from one of the Panama steamers, was a young and very handsome female.

Her personal attractions had excited the attention and admiration of many of the male passengers, who would fain have improved the chance of becoming more intimate with her, had they not been kept aloof by the distant manners of a gentleman, under whose protection she appeared to be, and, perhaps, even more by the young girl’s reserved ways and apparently sad expression of countenance.

Who this lady was will appear in the course of our tale. Her companion called her Fanny—but whether she was his wife or not, was unknown to the rest of the passengers.

About a fortnight after Fanny arrived in San Francisco she rose from her slumbers, broken by unquiet visions, with pale and gloomy looks, for she had not yet decided upon the course she would adopt in her present extremity, and her sombre countenance and spiritless manners attracted the notice of her landlady.

‘Mr. Edwards has gone to Sacramento, I hear,’ said she, as she placed the breakfast equipage upon the table.

‘Yes.’ replied Fanny, coldly.

‘He did not say anything to me about the rent,’ observed the woman, in a doubtful and hesitating tone. ‘He engaged the apartments, you know; but if you pay the rent when it is due, of course it is all the same.’

‘You have always received your rent from me, Mrs. Smith,’ returned Fanny, somewhat haughtily, ‘and as long as I occupy your apartments I shall continue to pay for them. I hope you do not doubt my ability to do so?’

‘Oh, no,’ said her landlady. ‘Only as Mr. Edwards engaged the apartments, and has now left without saying anything about the matter, I did not know how matters might be; but I meant no offence, I am sure.’

Mrs. Smith whisked herself out of the room, and Fanny was again alone to contemplate the dread realities of her position. Still undecided, still reluctant to adopt either of the alternatives which she had canvassed over, but keenly alive to the necessity of a speedy decision, she yet sought to avert the crisis, if only for a few days; and having made a bundle of a silk dress and a handsome shawl which Edwards had given her, she left the house to obtain the means of liquidating the week’s rent, that would be due on the ensuing day.

‘Mrs. Edwards,’ said a female voice behind her, as she stood before the window of a pawnbroker’s shop, unable to summon courage to enter; and turning round she beheld a young girl, stylishly dressed and possessed of considerable pretensions to beauty, whom she instantly recognized as a fellow-lodger with whom she had once or twice exchanged civilities when they had met upon the stairs or in the passage.

‘I have renounced that name forever, Miss Jessop,’ said she ‘and would forget all the associations belonging to it.’

‘Ah, I heard that Mr. Edwards had gone to Sacramento,’ observed Miss Jessop.

‘You knew it, then, before I did,’ returned Fanny, with a slight bitterness of accent.

‘Indeed!’ rejoined Miss Jessop. ‘But do not think of going to the pawnbroker’s, for I am sure that is where you are going.—’

‘Who told you that I was going to the pawnbroker’s?’ inquired Fanny, coloring, and speaking in a tone of mingled vexation and surprise.

‘Nay, do not be angry!’ said Miss Jessop, whose manner was kind and conciliating. ‘I was sure of it, as soon as I saw you, and you cannot deny it; but do not look vexed because I have penetrated your intentions. I see that you want a friend, and it was because I felt convinced that you were going into the shop that I accosted you.’

‘I do indeed want a friend, Miss Jessop,’ returned Fanny, sighing, ‘I never felt the want of one so much as at this moment.’

‘Then come home, if you have no where else to go to, and we will have a little chat together,’ said Miss Jessop, in a very friendly tone. ‘I am older than you in years, and still older in experience, for all that you now see dimly louring upon the horizon, I have long ago passed through.’

Fanny was in that frame of mind which prompts the seeker after guidance or consolation to be communicative and to give confidence wherever friendship is proffered, and she walked home with Miss Jessop, whom she invited into her own sitting-room.

‘You are very comfortable here,’ said the young lady, as she glanced round the apartment. ‘I hope you do not think of leaving?’

‘I have thought of many things, but as yet have been able to decide upon nothing,’ returned Fanny, with a faint smile.

‘And yet you were about to do the most foolish thing imaginable, if I had not prevented you,’ observed Miss Jessop. ‘For whatever course you decide upon, it would be foolish to make away with your best clothes, and the money you raised by so doing would only serve to avert for a few days the decision that you would have to come to at last. For instance, if you decide upon returning home to your friends, where would be the use of delaying your return until you had eat up all your clothes? Again if you determined upon receiving the visits of any other gentleman, would it not be foolish to delay accepting of his proposals until you were penniless? If you will take the advice of one who has been in the same position, you will do at once, whatever you decide upon doing, for, however desperate your position may be, procrastination will only make it worse.’

Fanny felt the force of her new friend’s reasoning, and after reflecting upon it for a moment, frankly disclosed her position, signifying the repugnance which she felt to returning home.

‘You see that I understand your position as well as if I had been acquainted with it,’ said Miss Jessop, with a smile. ‘If you will go out with me this evening I will introduce you to a banker who is sure to be delighted with you. He is very liberal, and I know he admires your dark style of beauty above all others.’

Fanny’s curiosity and vanity were both excited by this flattering description, and as reflection had confirmed her in her determination not to return home, little persuasion was needed to induce her to assent to her new friend’s proposition.

Night found Fanny and Miss Jessop seated in a temple dedicated equally to Venus and to Bacchus. The former was surprised by the scene which met her gaze, and the appearance of the females who promenaded the saloon, or were seated by the side or on the knees of gay gentlemen, enlightened her both as to the character of the place and that of her companions, if indeed there had been in her mind any doubt as to the latter, previous to her introduction to that flowery scene of vice.

‘There!—that is the person of whom I spoke to you,’ said Miss Jessop, in a whisper, as the banker entered the saloon, and as the roue caught the eye of Fanny’s companion, and saw by her side a beautiful young female whom he had never seen before, he advanced towards the table at which they were seated, and sat down opposite to them.

‘You look blooming to-night, Miss Jessop,’ said he, eyeing Fanny as he spoke. ‘Champagne, waiter. Who is your handsome young friend?’

Fanny blushed at the compliment, and her companion answered, with a smile, ‘A young friend of mine whom I have promised to introduce to you, Mr. Edwards.’

Fanny and the banker were soon upon the most friendly terms. He invited the ladies to take wine with him. Fanny’s reserve vanished by degrees under its influence, and the compliments of the banker appealed to her vanity. She was soon induced to accompany him to a house in the neighborhood. Fanny had committed herself to the tide of destiny, suffering it to bear her wither it would, and she entered into the house, of the character of which her inexperience allowed her to form no conception. But when they were conducted by an attendant into a bedchamber, she was recalled all at once to the nature of her position, and she blushed deeply; her companion, however, found means to remove her scruples, and she left the house, in company with Miss Jessop, richer indeed in purse, but bankrupt in honor.

It was near midnight,—some weeks after Fanny’s fatal resolution—the gay votaries of pleasure were leaving the Jenny Lind Theatre, some few in equipages, but a greater number on foot; beyond the immediate neighborhood of the theatre, however, the bustle was little increased, for the bar-rooms, the Arcade, the El Dorado, the Lafayette, and the Bella Union, received the human tide almost as fast as its waves ebbed from the portico of the theatre.

One female form alone lingered under the portico!

She was a lovely dark-eyed girl, rather below the middle height of woman, and wore a silk dress, faded and stained, a mantle of the same material, creased and much worn, and a velvet bonnet modish in form, but worn and faded, and adorned with a black feather in the last stage of decay. Her complexion was dark, and dissipation and late hours had not yet banished the last tinge of rose from her cheeks; her bright eyes were shaded by long jetty lashes, and her black hair was glossy as the pinion of the raven; her lips seemed formed of coral by the art of the turner, and her form was symmetrical and attractive in the highest degree. A little while before those dark eyes had beamed with simulated passion, and those vermeil lips had been wreathed with the most winning and wanton smiles; but as the last hack drove away from the front of the theatre, the expression of the girl’s countenance, which seemed to have been stamped there as with a searing iron, by the vivid consciousness of shame and degradation. The change was like the removal of the garland and veil from the skull of the skeleton guest at the banquet of the old Egyptians. A light rain was beginning to fall, the pavement was becoming wet and clammy, and the girl looked down with a sigh and a shudder at her thin shoes.

Then she stepped upon the pavement, shivered for a moment on the edge and crossed the slippery street, to where the large lamp over the door of a large cafe threw its yellow glare upon the wet sidewalk. A tall, well-shaped man came out of the tavern at the moment she approached the door, and between him and the young girl there passed glances of recognition.

‘Blodget!’ she exclaimed, in a low gasping tone.

‘Ah! why it is little Fanny!’ said he, in a tone between a recognition and surprise.

‘Yes,’ returned the young girl, with a look at once appealing and reproachful, ‘It is Fanny—your victim.’

‘Humph,’ said Blodget, averting his countenance from the girl’s earnest gaze, and biting his lip. ‘Have you been looking for me?’ he inquired, after a moment’s pause, and still without looking upon the girl’s wan countenance, as if he felt that her looks would reproach him, even though she uttered not a word.

‘No,’ returned Fanny. ‘I knew not that you were in this city. I am glad, Mr. Blodget, to perceive that you have still so much virtue left, that you cannot look upon the face of the girl you have wronged and deceived, that you shrink from the contemplation of your work of evil.’

‘Don’t let us quarrel,’ said Blodget, in a low voice, and with an evident uneasiness of manner. ‘Come in, and we will go up stairs, and have a bottle of wine.’

‘Never, with you, Blodget!’ exclaimed Fanny, energetically.

‘Your baseness has reduced me to a depth of degradation to which I would not at one time have believed possible for me to fall, but never will I sit down in a public room with the author of my ruin.’

‘Well, where do you live?’ said Blodget in a tone of vexation. ‘I cannot stand talking to you in the street—besides, it rains.’

‘Ah, you are ashamed of me?’ returned Fanny in a tone of bitterness, though her voice trembled and her lips quivered as she spoke. ‘Why were you not rather ashamed to become the destroyer of my happiness, my innocence, perhaps, my soul?’

‘Pooh, nonsense, Fan,’ returned Blodget, the glow of conscious guilt mantling upon his cheeks, in spite of his assumed nonchalance. ‘You are in a melancholy mood to-night, and if you mean to stand here talking like that, I shall rush off. It is getting late, and you had better go home.’

‘Home!’ ejaculated Fanny, with a bitter intonation, and hot tears gathered in her dark eyes, and trembled on her black and silken lashes.

‘Bill!’ said Blodget, to a pale, shabby dissipated-looking young man, who came out of the bar-room at that moment—‘bring a hack!’

In a few minutes the vehicle rolled up to the spot, and the driver jumped from his seat to open the door. Fanny allowed her seducer to hand her into the hack but her thoughts were wandering, and she felt a slight degree of surprise when Blodget got in, and seated himself by her side.

‘Where to, sir,’ said the driver, as he closed the door.

Blodget looked at Fanny, who mentioned the name of the street in which she lived, and in a few minutes the hack was dashing over the miry road. Fanny leaned back in silence, and when her companion passed his arm around her waist, she shrank from his touch, and he instantly removed it.

‘What is the use of your being angry with me, Fanny?’ said he, in a deprecating tone. ‘What has passed can never be recalled, and had better be forgotten. Let us—’

‘Forgotten?’ exclaimed Fanny, raising her dark eyes sadly and reproachfully to his countenance, as he saw by the light of a lamp which the coach passed at the moment. ‘Do you think that I can ever forget what I have been or what I am now? That I can forget there was a time when I was innocent and happy, and cease to contrast that time with the wretched present?’

‘Why are you not happy now?’ inquired the rouÉ.

‘Can you ask me why I am not happy now, Blodget?’ returned Fanny, in a tone of deep and touching emphasis. ‘Ah, do not affect what you do not feel. Do not make me think you so thoroughly heartless as such a question would imply. You know that I am not and cannot be happy.’

Blodget was silent, and in a few moments the hack stopped opposite the house that had for some weeks been the abode of the lost and degraded Fanny. Blodget sprang out, assisted Fanny to alight, and having discharged the hack, followed the young girl up the court and into the house in which she lodged. She ascended the stairs, permitting Blodget to follow her, and when they had entered a small bed-room of the most wretched appearance. She closed the door, set the light which she had received on entering the house, upon a pine table, and sinking upon a chair by the side of the bed, buried her countenance in the clothes.

‘How long have you been in such a place as this?’ inquired Blodget, as he threw a quick glance round the wretched chamber.

‘I permitted you to come here, that you might form a faint idea of the depth to which you have plunged me,’ said Fanny, raising her head from the bed.

‘Reproaches are useless,’ returned the man, gloomily: ‘I am sorry for what has passed, Fanny, and now let us be friends again.’

‘On what terms?’ inquired Fanny.

‘Oh, never mind the terms.’ returned Blodget, sitting on the side of the bed, and taking the young girl’s hand. ‘Kiss me, Fan, and we will have a bottle of wine up here—no, not here,’ he added, again casting his eyes around the miserable chamber. ‘Come away with me to a house of accommodation.’

‘And to-morrow?’ said Fanny, doubtfully and inquiringly.

‘To-morrow we shall be as good friends as ever we were.’

‘Blodget,’ said Fanny, in a deep and even solemn tone, while she raised her dark eyes to his countenance, with an expression of profound earnestness, ‘I would rather die than continue to lead the life which I have lived since you so unkindly deserted me. Indeed, I know not why I have not long since sought death in preference to such a life of shame, and misery and conscious degradation. Tell me whether you mean to atone for all that you have made me suffer by making me your wife?’

‘You cannot expect it,’ returned Blodget, dropping her hands, and taking a hasty turn across the room. ‘You have seen enough of life by this time, I should think, to see the foolishness of such an expectation.’

‘My experience of life has been bitter enough, God knows,’ said Fanny, heaving a deep sigh, while tears again gathered in her dark eyes. ‘Why did you ever seek my love? Was it honorable to do so, and to win my heart, and then, when I had given you the tenderest proof of love that woman can bestow, to cast me from you as you might a flower that you had plucked for its beauty and fragrance, and when it had ceased to charm, you cast upon the footway to be trodden upon and to mingle with the mire? That is what you have done—that has been my fate.’

‘Well, it cannot be helped now, Fan,’ observed Blodget, some twitchings of remorse giving a slight degree of impatience to his tone. ‘Will you come away from here and have a bottle of wine with me? Nay, if you like it better, for once I will stop here.’

‘Never again, Blodget, will I press the same bed with you, unless as your wife,’ exclaimed Fanny, with solemn earnestness. ‘I would rather lay down in some secluded spot, and die of hunger; or seek a refuge from the shame and misery that are killing me, in the waters of the bay.’

‘Good night, then,’ returned the seducer. ‘I am off! I will do the generous, though.’

The libertine’s tone and manner were hurried and uneasy. He took a slug from his purse and laid it on the table, but Fanny rose immediately, her dark eyes flashing and her cheeks glowing, and taking up the coin, threw it at his feet.

‘Not from you, sir!’ she exclaimed vehemently. ‘I will neither sell myself to you, nor have it thought that I have done so. You sought me, and you gained me, and I do not blush for what has passed; but my fond and trusting heart betrayed me, and not such a paltry bribe as that. Would you have me despise myself more than I do already?’

‘Fanny,’ said Blodget, in a tone which evinced considerable agitation, for the words, look, and tone of the poor girl had at length penetrated to his heart. ‘Let us be friends, as we were before I left New-York. Forgive me for what you have suffered, and kiss me.’

‘No! no!’ returned Fanny, extending her hand to ward him as he approached her. ‘I forgive you, and now leave me; but remember that there is One besides whose forgiveness you have to seek, and whose pardon is of more consequence than mine.’

‘You will not kiss me, then—not even as a sign of your forgiveness?’ said the libertine, who thought that if the young girl suffered him to hold her in his embrace he should be able to win her to a more agreeable termination to their interview than appeared likely otherwise.

‘No,’ replied Fanny, firmly. ‘You have ceased to love me, and I should loathe myself were I to suffer any approach to a renewal of our former intimacy.’ Blodget lingered a moment longer, glanced toward the slug which still lay on the floor, where the indignant girl had thrown it, and then quitted the room.

When the door had closed upon her seducer, Fanny threw herself upon the bed, and hiding her countenance in the clothes, burst into a flood of bitter and scalding tears. Oh, how agonizing were the reminiscence, how bitter the reflections, evoked by the accidental meeting with the man to whom she owed all the unhappiness she ever knew. The thought of her home, of the poor, but honest parents whom she could never look in the face again, of the companions of her childhood, in the village of her birth, and from these subjects of reflection her thoughts wandered to the beginnings of her ill-starred acquaintance with Blodget, and the sudden dissolving of the dream of happiness she had had, so bright and blissful, but, alas, so transient.

Her tears ceased to flow, without having brought her any relief, and seating herself by the bedside, she grew by degrees more calm, but it was an unnatural calmness, not the tranquility which speaks of peace within, but a mere lull in the tempest of human passions. She glanced at the glittering coin upon the floor, but she felt that to pick it up and appropriate it to her own use, would be to accept a money compensation for her wrongs, and though husbands in the upper classes of society are accustomed to accept such compensation from the seducers of their wives, yet the purer soul of that crushed violet of the pavement, revolted at the thought.

Yet must she have money; she was penniless, and for her there was no alternative between a life of infamy and degradation, and the unblessed grave of the suicide. Moreover she could not bear to be alone with her heart-crushing brain-searing, maddening thoughts: she felt that she must fly from them, or, madness or suicide would be the result. The thought of surrendering herself to the embraces of a stranger was less repugnant to her mind, in the mood which had come upon her, than that of selling to her seducer for money the favors which he had once enjoyed through her love; if she must sin, she resolved that it should not be with him, to those arms she had originally gone pure and chaste.

Leaving the money upon the floor, she went down stairs, darted past a stout red-faced old woman in a faded silk dress, whom she met in the passage, in order to avoid an explanation, and rushed through the miry court into the street. A misty rain was still falling, and there were few persons in the streets, but she knew there were yet plenty of loungers and revellers in the taverns about Commercial Street, and thitherward, she retraced her steps. She had nearly reached the crossing of Montgomery Street, when she saw a young man come out of the corner bar-room and walk down towards the wharf, with a reeling gait, as if under the influence of liquor. Thinking that he might be easily induced to accompany her home, she followed him, but before she could overtake him he entered another bar-room.

Fanny lingered for a moment on the clammy pavement, but the deserted appearance of the streets speedily decided her, and she turned into the house and entered.

The young man was sitting at one of the tables over which he was leaning, with his head leaning on his arms, and his countenance concealed: but no one else was in the room. A glass stood on the table. The man did not move when she entered, though she knew he could not be asleep, having only entered the house a moment before.

‘What a disagreeable night,’ Fanny ventured to observe, in the hope of attracting the young man’s attention.

At the sound of her voice he started from his seat as if he had received a shock from a galvanic battery, and gazed with mingled wildness and earnestness at her. Fanny started also, and staggering backwards, sank upon a bench, and covered her face with her hands, for she had recognized Robert Jervis, her affianced lover, in the days of her virtuous happiness. Jervis was pale, and the unexpected meeting with one whom he had once loved so ardently had given to his countenance an expression of wildness and extreme agitation.

‘Has Fanny sunk so low as this? and so soon, too,’ said he, in a low voice, rendered hoarse by the agitation of his feelings. ‘Has she who ran away from her home become in so short a time a midnight frequenter of overcharged, and the common associate of the vicious portion of a class, the reputable members of which she once looked down upon with disdain?’

‘Spare me, Robert,’ said Fanny, in a faint and broken voice, and without removing her hands from her countenance, ‘You know not what I have suffered—what I am suffering now.’

‘I can easily believe that,’ returned Robert, surveying her with a look of mournful interest. ‘You have made me suffer, too—more deeply than I can find words to express; but I will not reproach you. While you have a heart to feel, if vice does not harden it to the core, you will find reproaches there which I cannot spare you.’

‘I do,’ exclaimed Fanny, sobs choking her voice, and the pearly tears trickling down her hands. ‘You cannot reproach me more severely than my own heart does at this moment. If you knew all that I have endured and am enduring you would pity me.’

‘Pity you!’ said Robert, who had become perfectly sober the moment he recognized the lost girl upon whom he was now gazing. ‘I have never ceased to pity you since the moment of my return to reason after that hour of madness that ruined both myself and you.’

‘It was all my fault,’ sobbed Fanny, weeping as if her heart would break.

‘It matters little now, whether the fault was wholly yours or partly mine,’ said Robert, taking a hasty turn up and down the room. ‘It was more the fault of that villain Blodget: may heaven’s avenging lightnings scathe and blast him! May his own happiness and peace of mind be wrecked as ours have been!’

Fanny sobbed bitterly, and dared not raise her eyes to Robert’s agitated countenance. The young man took two or three turns up and down the bar-room, and then he became a little calmer, and pausing near the table at which he had been sitting, threw a furtive glance towards the weeping Fanny.

‘And you have really fallen so low as your presence here seems to imply?’ said he, endeavoring to steady his voice, though it was low and tremulous, and his lips quivered as he spoke.

‘Imagine the worse, and you will know all,’ replied Fanny, in a broken and faltering voice. ‘I have wished a hundred times that I were at the bottom of the bay, but I cannot do it. I pray for death, that I may be spared further misery and sin, and yet I live.’

‘Heaven have mercy on us all, for we have need of mercy!’ exclaimed Robert, in a tone which betrayed the emotion that he felt, and leaning with his elbows on the table, he buried his face in his hands.

He heard Fanny sobbing, but for some moments neither of them moved or spoke. Then he heard a slight rustling, and he removed his hands from his pale and agitated countenance, and slowly raised his head. Fanny was hurriedly leaving the room; it was her mantle brushing the door as she passed out, which he had heard. He sighed heavily, and then he dropped his head upon his hands again, and sat silent and motionless, until roused by the entrance of the bar-keeper who, thinking that he was asleep, shook him, and bawled that he was going to close the house. Then he arose, quitted the house, and walked slowly, and with an expression of misery and despair upon his pale countenance. The rain had now degenerated into a thick fog, through which the lamps twinkled dimly, and the pavement was covered with thin mire of the color and adhesive quality which distinguishes the mud of San Francisco, except where the broken condition of the pavement of the footway permitted the turbid water to lay in large puddles, dimly reflecting the street lamps. Regardless of the puddles, Robert walked on, now with his eyes fixed upon the miry pavement, and now looking forward with contracted brow and moving though silent lips; and when he reached a lane, he went straight on and entered a house. Thither we will not immediately follow him.

On leaving the bar-room, where she had encountered Robert Jervis, Fanny had hurried down to the wharf, where she began to walk more slowly, the terrible excitement which had until then impelled her onward, beginning to subside. But though she walked more slowly, she kept towards the bay, and still walked slowly onwards. About the hour of one, she advanced towards steps leading down to some water. It was not the first time since she had added herself to the thousands of unfortunate women who seek the wages of sin, that she sought the bay with suicidal purposes, but there was something so terrible and so awful to her mind in the thought of death, that she had never dared to attempt the execution of it.

‘It must be done,’ she murmured, as she approached the steps. ‘I can endure this dreadful life no longer.’

She descended the steps hurriedly, but on the lowest that was uncovered by the water, she paused, and gazed upon the dark bosom of the flood that rolled with a hoarse dull murmur.

‘Death! What is it?’ murmured the miserable girl, clasping her small white hands, and looking down upon the water that rolled darkly at her feet. ‘Awful mystery, which I wish, yet fear, to solve! Is it but the intermediate state which mortals pass through to free the soul from the grossness which clogs it during its sojourn on earth, and fit it for a higher and happier state of existence? or is it a long sleep—a night without dreams, and to which no morrow comes? Is it, as some say, the chrysalis state from which we emerge into new life, like the butterfly? Unfortunate analogy!—the repugnance to the soul’s annihilation, this longing after immortality? Oh there must be something beyond the grave, though what I cannot say. It cannot be worse, whatever it may be than the life I am leading.’

She paused in her muttered soliloquy, thinking she heard soft and cautious footsteps behind her, but on casting a look up the steps, she saw no one; indeed the fog prevented her from seeing more than a couple of yards.

‘It is nothing,’ she muttered. ‘Now to end a life of which I have long been weary! It is but a plunge—a splashing of the water—a circling ripple on the surface—and all will be over!’

As she murmured these words, the poor girl threw herself into the dark waters, adding to the long list of man’s perfidy and inhumanity—‘One more unfortunate victim.’