ears.

"I do not like," she said, "to give you so much trouble. Go your way,
sir, and rest assured you take my best thanks with you."

For all that she laid her hand on the arm my good master offered her,
and we set out, all the three of us, for the Halles. The night had
turned much cooler. In the sky, which was beginning to assume a milky
hue, the stars were growing paler and fainter. We could hear the first
of the market-gardeners' carts rumbling along to the Halles, drawn by a
slow-stepping horse, half asleep in the shafts. Arrived at the archways,
we chose a place in the recess of a porch distinguished by an image of
St. Nicholas, and established ourselves all three on a stone step, on
which M. l'Abbe Coignard took the precaution of spreading his cloak
before he let his young charge sit down.

Thereupon my good master fell to discoursing on divers subjects,
choosing merry and enlivening themes of set purpose to drive away the
gloomy thoughts that might assail our companion's mind. He told her he
accounted this rencounter the most fortunate he had ever chanced on all
his life, and that he should ever cherish a fond recollection of one who
had so deeply touched him,--all this, however, without ever asking to
know her name and story.

My good master thought no doubt that the unknown would presently tell
him what he refrained from asking. She broke into a fresh flood of
weeping, heaved a deep sigh and said:

"I should be churlish, sir, to reward your kindness with silence. I am
not afraid to trust myself in your hands. My name is Sophie T------. You
have guessed the truth; 'tis the betrayal of a lover I was too fondly
attached to has brought me to despair. If you deem my grief excessive,
that is because you do not know how great was my assurance, how blind my
infatuation, and you cannot realize how enchanting was the paradise I
have lost."

Then, raising her lovely eyes to our faces, she went on:

"Sirs, I am not such a woman as your meeting me thus at night time might
lead you to suppose. My father was a merchant. He went, in the way of
trade, to America, and was lost on his way home in a shipwreck, he
and his merchandise with him. My mother was so overwhelmed by these
calamities that she fell into a decline and died, leaving me, while
still a child, to the charge of an aunt, who brought me up. I was a
good girl till the hour I met the man whose love was to afford me
indescribable delights, ending in the despai