I shall understand that you fail to recognize
these persons. But if you shut the volume, you may expect to see me
also fold up my newspaper; for by so doing you will have signaled
me that you have identified the young man and woman you saw leaving
Mr. Adams's house on the fatal afternoon of your first entrance. E.
G.

CHAPTER XI.

MISERY.

It is to be hoped that the well-dressed lady of uncertain age who was to
be seen late that afternoon in a remote corner of the hotel piazza at
Belleville had not chosen a tale requiring great concentration of mind,
for her eyes (rather fine ones in their way, showing both keenness and
good nature) seemed to find more to interest them in the scene before
her than in the pages she so industriously turned over.

The scene was one calculated to interest an idle mind, no doubt. First,
there was the sea, a wide expanse of blue, dotted by numerous sails;
then the beach, enlivened by groups of young people dressed like
popinjays in every color; then the village street, and, lastly, a lawn
over which there now and then strayed young couples with tennis rackets
in their hands or golf sticks under their arms. Children, too--but
children did not seem to interest this amiable spinster. (There could be
no doubt about her being a spinster.) She scarcely glanced at them
twice, while a young married pair, or even an old gentleman, if he were
only tall and imperious-looking, invariably caused her eyes to wander
from her book, which, by the way, she held too near for seeing, or such
might have been the criticism of a wary observer.

This criticism, if criticism it would be called, could not have been
made of the spruce, but rather feeble octogenarian at the other end of
the piazza. He was evidently absorbed in the novel he held so
conspicuously open, and which, from the smiles now and then disturbing
the usual placidity of his benevolent features, we can take for granted
was sufficiently amusing. Yet right in the midst of it, and certainly
before he had finished his chapter, he closed his book and took out a
newspaper, which he opened to its full width before sitting down to
peruse its columns. At the same moment the lady at the other end of the
piazza could be seen looking over her spectacles at two gentlemen who
just at that moment issued from the great door opening between her and
the elderly person just alluded to. Did she know them, or was it only
her curiosi