host? or was it a hostess?
Was it Eugenie Besancon? Did she not say something of her house--"_ma
maison_?" or did I only dream it?

I lay guessing and reflecting over a mass of confused memories; but I
could not from these arrive at any knowledge of whose guest I was.
Nevertheless, I had a sort of belief that I was in the house of my last
night's companion.

I became anxious, and in my weakness perhaps felt a little vexed at
being left alone. I would have rung, but no bell was within reach. At
that moment, however, I heard the sound of approaching footsteps.

Romantic miss! you will fancy that those footsteps were light and soft,
made by a small satin slipper, scarcely discomposing the loosest,
tiniest pebble--stealthily drawing near lest their sound might awake the
sleeping invalid--and then, in the midst of bird-music, and humming
waters, and the sweet perfume of flowers, a fair form appeared in the
doorway, and I saw a gentle face, with a pair of soft, lovely eyes, in a
timid inquiring glance, gazing upon me. You will fancy all this, no
doubt; but your fancy is entirely at fault, and not at all like the
reality.

The footsteps I heard were made by a pair of thick "brogans" of
alligator leather, and full thirteen inches in length; which brogans the
next moment rested upon the sill of the door directly before my eyes.

On raising my glance a little higher, I perceived a pair of legs, in
wide copper-coloured "jeans," pantaloons; and carrying my eye still
higher, I perceived a broad, heavy chest, covered with a striped cotton
shirt; a pair of massive arms and huge shoulders, surmounted by the
shining face and woolly head of a jet black negro!

The face and head came under my observation last; but on these my eyes
dwelt longest, scanning them over and over, until I at length, despite
the pain I was suffering, burst out into a sonorous laugh! If I had
been dying, I could not have helped it; there was something so comic, so
irresistibly ludicrous, in the physiognomy of this sable intruder.

He was a full-grown and rather large negro, as black as charcoal, with a
splendid tier of "ivories;" and with eyeballs, pupil and irides
excepted, as white as his teeth. But it was not these that had tickled
my fancy. It was the peculiar contour of his head, and the set and size
of his ears. The former was as round as a globe, and thickly covered
with small kinky curlets of black wool, so closely set that they seemed
to r