erybody's heart failing for fear of that august,
unknown lady. A sudden resolution on the doctor's part to delay the
dread moment of consigning Bessie to the school-mistress until evening,
and a descent on Thunby's hotel. A walk down the Rue St. Jean to the
Place St. Pierre, and by the way a glimpse, through an open door in a
venerable gateway, of a gravelled court-yard planted with sycamores and
surrounded by lofty walls, draped to the summit with vines and ivy; in
the distance an arcade with vistas of garden beyond lying drowsy in the
sunshine, the angle of a large mansion, and fluttering lilac wreaths of
wisteria over the portal.

"If this is Madame Fournier's school, it is a hushed little world," said
the doctor.

Bessie beheld it with awe. There was a solemn picturesqueness in the
prospect that daunted her imagination.

Harry Musgrave referred to his guide-book: "Ah, I thought so--this is
the place. Bessie, Charlotte Corday lived here."

Above the rickety gateway were two rickety windows. At those windows
Charlotte might have sat over her copy of Plutarch's "Lives," a
ruminating republican in white muslin, before the Revolution, or have
gazed at the sombre church of St. Jean across the street, in the happier
days before she despised going to old-fashioned worship. Bessie looked
up at them more awed than ever. "I hope her ghost does not haunt the
house. Come away, Harry," she whispered.

Harry laughed at her superstition. They went forward under the irregular
peaked houses, stunned at intervals by side-gusts of evil odor, till
they came to the place and church of St. Pierre. The market-women in
white-winged caps, who had been sitting at the receipt of custom since
morning surrounded by heaps of glowing fruit and flowers, were now
vociferously gathering up their fragments, their waifs and strays and
remnants, to go home. The men were harnessing their horses, filling
their carts. It was all a clamorous, sunny, odd sort of picture amidst
the quaint and ancient buildings. Then they went into the church, into
the gloom and silence out of the stir. The doctor made the young ones a
sign to hush. There were women on their knees, and on the steps of the
altar a priest of dignified aspect, and a file of acolytes, awfully
ugly, the very refuse of the species--all but one, who was a saint for
beauty of countenance and devoutness of mien. Harry glanced at him and
his companions as if they were beings of a strange and myster