.

I tried to dismiss the incident, but it would not leave me, and later
that same evening something else occurred that fixed it still clearer in
my thoughts. I had taken out two or three books at random with which to
amuse myself, and turning over the leaves of one of them, a volume of
verses by some obscure poet, I found its sentimental passages much scored
and commented upon in pencil as was common fifty years ago--as may be
common now, for your Fleet Street cynic has not altered the world and its
ways to quite the extent that he imagines.

One poem in particular had evidently appealed greatly to the reader's
sympathies. It was the old, old story of the gallant who woos and rides
away, leaving the maiden to weep. The poetry was poor, and at another
time its conventionality would have excited only my ridicule. But,
reading it in conjunction with the quaint, naive notes scattered about
its margins, I felt no inclination to jeer. These hackneyed stories that
we laugh at are deep profundities to the many who find in them some
shadow of their own sorrows, and she--for it was a woman's handwriting--to
whom this book belonged had loved its trite verses, because in them she
had read her own heart. This, I told myself, was her story also. A
common enough story in life as in literature, but novel to those who live
it.

There was no reason for my connecting her with the original of the
miniature, except perhaps a subtle relationship between the thin nervous
handwriting and the mobile features; yet I felt instinctively they were
one and the same, and that I was tracing, link by link, the history of my
forgotten friend.

I felt urged to probe further, and next morning while my landlady was
clearing away my breakfast things, I fenced round the subject once again.

"By the way," I said, "while I think of it, if I leave any books or
papers here behind me, send them on at once. I have a knack of doing
that sort of thing. I suppose," I added, "your lodgers often do leave
some of their belongings behind them."

It sounded to myself a clumsy ruse. I wondered if she would suspect what
was behind it.

"Not often," she answered. "Never that I can remember, except in the
case of one poor lady who died here."

I glanced up quickly.

"In this room?" I asked.

My landlady seemed troubled at my tone.

"Well, not exactly in this very room. We carried her upstairs, but she
died immediately. She was dying when she came h