wholly incompetent lights serving to make the gloom more
visible. None the less, as I passed for the last time, I plainly saw a
shaft of light fall upon the half darkness from a little side door.
There emerged upon the street the figure of a woman. I do not know what
led me to cast a second glance, for certainly my business was not with
ladies, any more than I would have supposed ladies had business there;
but, victim of some impulse of curiosity, I walked a step or two in the
same direction as that taken by the cloaked figure.

Careless as I endeavored to make my movements, the veiled lady seemed to
take suspicion or fright. She quickened her steps. Accident favored me.
Even as she fled, she caught her skirt on some object which lay hidden
in the shadows and fell almost at full length. This I conceived to be
opportunity warranting my approach. I raised my hat and assured her that
her flight was needless.

She made no direct reply to me, but as she rose gave utterance to an
expression of annoyance. "_Mon Dieu!_" I heard her say.

I stood for a moment trying to recall where I had heard this same voice!
She turned her face in such a way that the light illuminated it. Then
indeed surprise smote me.

"Madam Baroness," said I, laughing, "it is wholly impossible for you to
be here, yet you are here! Never again will I say there is no such thing
as chance, no such thing as fate, no such thing as a miracle!"

She looked at me one brief moment; then her courage returned.

"Ah, then, my idiot," she said, "since it is to be our fortune always to
meet of dark nights and in impossible ways, give me your arm."

I laughed. "We may as well make treaty. If you run again, I shall only
follow you."

"Then I am again your prisoner?"

"Madam, I again am yours!"

"At least, you improve!" said she. "Then come."

"Shall I not call a _caleche?_--the night is dark."

"No, no!" hurriedly.

We began a midnight course that took us quite across the old French
quarter of Montreal. At last she turned into a small, dark street of
modest one-story residences, iron-shuttered, dark and cheerless. Here
she paused in front of a narrow iron gate.

"Madam," I said, "you represent to me one of the problems of my life.
Why does your taste run to such quarters as these? This might be that
same back street in Washington!"

She chuckled to herself, at length laughed aloud. "But wait! If you
entered my abode once," she said, "why not again? Come.