the name, "Madame Beck." Providence said: "Stop here; this
is your inn." I rang the door-bell.

"May I see Madame Beck?" I inquired of the servant who opened the door.
As I spoke in English I was admitted without a moment's hesitation.

I sat, turning hot and cold, in a glittering salon for a quarter of an
hour, and then a voice said: "You ayre Engliss?"

The question came from a motherly, dumpy little woman in a large shawl,
a wrapping gown, a clean, trim nightcap, and shod with the shoes of
silence.

As I told my story, through a mistress who had been summoned to
translate the speech of Albion, I thought the tale won madame's ear,
though never a gleam of sympathy crossed her countenance. A man's step
was heard in the vestibule, hastily proceeding to the outer door.

"Who goes out now?" demanded Madame Beck, listening to the tread.

"M. Paul Emanuel," replied the teacher.

"The very man! Call him."

He entered: a small, dark, and square man, in spectacles.

"_Mon cousin_," began madame, "read that countenance."

The little man fixed on me his spectacles, a gathering of the brows
seeming to say that a veil would be no veil to him.

"Do you need her services?" he asked.

"I could do with them," said Madame Beck.

"Engage her." And with a _ban soir_ this sudden arbiter of my destiny
vanished.

Madame Beck possessed high administrative powers. She ruled a hundred
and twenty pupils, four teachers, eight masters, six servants and three
children, and managed the pupils' parents and friends to perfection,
without apparent effort. "Surveillance," "espionage"--these were the
watchwords of her system. She knew what honesty was, and liked it--when
it did not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and
interest. Wise, firm, faithless, secret, crafty, passionless, watchful
and inscrutable--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be desired?

Not a soul in all Madame Beck's house, from the scullion to the
directress herself, but was above being ashamed of a lie; they thought
nothing of it.

Here Miss Ginevra Fanshawe was a thriving pupil. She had a considerable
range of acquaintances outside the school, for Mrs. Cholmondeley, her
chaperon, a gay, fashionable lady, took her to evening parties at the
houses of her acquaintances. Soon I discovered by hints that ardent
admiration, perhaps genuine love, was at the command of this pretty and
charming, but by no means refined, girl. She called her suitor
"I