"Miss Hallam," I implored, almost in tears, "please do not tell any one
what has happened to me. I will never be such a fool again. I know
now--and you may trust me. But do not let any one know how--stupid I
have been. I told you I was stupid--I told you several times. I am sure
you must remember."

"Oh, yes, I remember. We will say no more about it."

"And the gray shawl," said I.

"Merrick had it."

I lifted my hands and shrugged my shoulders. "Just my luck," I murmured,
resignedly, as Merrick came in with a tray.

Miss Hallam, I noticed, continued to regard me now and then as I ate
with but small appetite. I was too excited by what had passed, and by
what I had just heard, to be hungry. I thought it kind, merciful, humane
in her to promise to keep my secret and not expose my ignorance and
stupidity to strangers.

"It is evident," she remarked, "that you must at once begin to learn
German, and then if you do get lost at a railway station again, you will
be able to ask your way."

Merrick shook her head with an inexpressibly bitter smile.

"I'd defy any one to learn this 'ere language, ma'am. They call an
accident a _Unglueck_; if any one could tell me what that means, I'd
thank them, that's all."

"Don't express your opinions, Merrick, unless you wish to seem
deficient in understanding; but go and see that Miss Wedderburn has
everything she wants--or rather everything that can be got--in her room.
She is tired, and shall go to bed."

I was only too glad to comply with this mandate, but it was long ere I
slept. I kept hearing the organ in the cathedral, and that voice of the
invisible singer--seeing the face beside me, and hearing the words,
"Then you have decided that I am to be trusted?"

"And he was deceiving me all the time!" I thought, mournfully.

I breakfasted by myself the following morning, in a room called the
speisesaal. I found I was late. When I came into the room, about nine
o'clock, there was no one but myself to be seen. There was a long table
with a white cloth upon it, and rows of the thickest cups and saucers it
had ever been my fate to see, with distinct evidences that the chief
part of the company had already breakfasted. Baskets full of _Broedchen_
and pots of butter, a long India-rubber pipe coming from the gas to
light a theemaschine--lots of cane-bottomed chairs, an open piano, two
cages with canaries in them; the kettle gently simmering above the
gas-flame; for the rest, silenc