4. _Priscilla_: a sort of White Lily, a clinging little mediumistic sempstress who has been made use of in public seances. A sort of prostitute soul.
5. _Zenobia's Husband_: an unpleasant decayed person with magnetic powers and teeth full of gold--or set in gold. It is he who has given public spiritualist demonstrations, with Priscilla for the medium. He is of the dark, sensual, decayed-handsome sort, and comes in unexpectedly by the back door.
_Plot I._--I, Nathaniel, at once catch cold, and have to be put to bed. Am nursed with inordinate tenderness by the black-smith, whose great hands are gentler than a woman's, etc.
The two men love one another with a love surpassing the love of women, so long as the healing-and-salvation business lasts. When Nathaniel wants to get well and have a soul of his own, he turns with hate to this black-bearded, booming Salvationist, Hephæstos of the underworld. Hates him for tryrannous monomaniac.
_Plot II._--Zenobia, that clever lustrous woman, is fascinated by the criminal-saving black-smith, and would have him at any price. Meanwhile she has the subtlest current of understanding with the frail but deep Nathaniel. And she takes the White Lily half-pityingly, half contemptuously under a rich and glossy dark wing.
_Plot III._--The blacksmith is after Zenobia, to get her money for his criminal asylum: of which of course he will be the first inmate.
_Plot IV._--Nathaniel also feels his mouth watering for the dark-luscious Zenobia.
_Plot V._--The White Lily, Priscilla, vaporously festering, turns out to be the famous Veiled Lady of public spiritualist shows: she whom the undesirable Husband, called the Professor, has used as a medium. Also she is Zenohia's half-sister.
Nobody wants Zenohia in the end. She goes off without her flower. The blacksmith marries Priscilla. Nathaniel dribblingly confesses that he, too, has loved Prissy all the while. Boo-hoo!
A few years after, Nathaniel meets the blacksmith in a country lane near a humble cottage, leaning totteringly on the arm of the frail but fervent Priscilla. Gone are all dreams of asylums, and the saviour of criminals can't even save himself from his own Veiled Lady.
There you have a nice little bunch of idealists, transcendentalists, brookfarmers, and disintegrated gentry. All going slightly rotten.