y that I had not encountered this time a person
in the lower ranks of life. He answered my question civilly in his own
language. Seeing that I was at a loss to understand what he said, he
invited me by signs to follow him. After walking for a few minutes in
a direction which was quite new to me, we stopped in a gloomy little
square, with a plot of neglected garden-ground in the middle of it.
Pointing to a lower window in one of the houses, in which a light dimly
appeared, my guide said in Dutch: "Office of Van Brandt, sir," bowed,
and left me.

I advanced to the window. It was open, and it was just high enough to be
above my head. The light in the room found its way outward through the
interstices of closed wooden shutters. Still haunted by misgivings of
trouble to come, I hesitated to announce my arrival precipitately by
ringing the house-bell. How did I know what new calamity might not
confront me when the door was opened? I waited under the window and
listened.

Hardly a minute passed before I heard a woman's voice in the room. There
was no mistaking the charm of those tones. It was the voice of Mrs. Van
Brandt.

"Come, darling," she said. "It is very late--you ought to have been in
bed two hours ago."

The child's voice answered, "I am not sleepy, mamma."

"But, my dear, remember you have been ill. You may be ill again if you
keep out of bed so late as this. Only lie down, and you will soon fall
asleep when I put the candle out."

"You must _not_ put the candle out!" the child returned, with strong
emphasis. "My new papa is coming. How is he to find his way to us, if
you put out the light?"

The mother answered sharply, as if the child's strange words had
irritated her.

"You are talking nonsense," she said; "and you must go to bed. Mr.
Germaine knows nothing about us. Mr. Germaine is in England."

I could restrain myself no longer. I called out under the window:

"Mr. Germaine is here!"

CHAPTER XXXVI. LOVE AND PRIDE.

A CRY of terror from the room told me that I had been heard. For a
moment more nothing happened. Then the child's voice reached me, wild
and shrill: "Open the shutters, mamma! I said he was coming--I want to
see him!"

There was still an interval of hesitation before the mother opened the
shutters. She did it at last. I saw her darkly at the window, with the
light behind her, and the child's head just visible above the lower part
of the window-frame. The quaint little face moved rap