d to say. I still, as I have said, glanced my eye, each
morning, along the upper angles of the court, and sidled now and then
by the gate of the neighboring hotel; but the window wore its usual
look--there was the veil, and the placard, and the disjointed,
rattling sash; and in the neighboring court was, sometimes, the tall
gentleman picking his way carefully over the stones, and sometimes the
stumpy figure of a waiting woman.

Some ten days after my chat with the neighbor concierge, I reached
the hotel of the abbe an hour earlier than my usual morning visit, and
took the occasion to reconnoitre the adjoining courts. The concierge,
my acquaintance of the week before, was busy with a bowl of coffee and
a huge roll; and, just as I had sidled up to his box for a word with
him, who should brush past in great apparent haste, but the pale, thin
gentleman who had before attracted my observation.

I determined to step around at once into the open corridor of the
abbe's hotel, and see if I could detect any movement--so slight even
as the opening or shutting of a door in the chamber of the narrow
window.

It was earlier by a half hour at the least than I had ever been in the
corridor before. The court was quiet; my eye ran to the little
window--at a glance I saw it had not its usual appearance. A light
cambric handkerchief, with lace border, was pinned across it from side
to side; and just at the moment that I began to scrutinize what seemed
to me like a coronet stitched on the corner, a couple of delicate
fingers reached over the hem, removed the fastening, first on one
side, then on the other--the handkerchief was gone.

It was the work of an instant, and evidently done in haste; but I
still caught a glimpse of a delicate female figure--sleeve hanging
loose about the arm a short way below the elbow, hair sweeping, half
curled and half carelessly over a cheek white as her dress, and an
expression, so far as I could judge, of deep sadness.

I shrunk back into a shadow of the corridor, and waited; but there was
no more stir at the window. The yellow placard dangled by one
fastening; a bit of the veil was visible, nothing else, to tell me of
the character of the inmate.

I told the abbe what I had seen.

The abbe closed his grammar, (keeping his thumb at the place,) shook
his head slowly from side to side, smiled, lifted his finger in
playful menace, and--went on with his lesson.

"Who can it be?" said I.

"Indeed, I ca