a
little strip of carpeting; and on the mantlepiece a zinc clock between
two blue glass vases. Nothing else!

How could M. de Brevan ever have selected such a room, such a hole?
Henrietta could not comprehend it. He had told her, and she had believed
him, that they must use extreme caution. But would she have been any
more compromised, or in greater danger of being discovered by the
Countess Sarah, if they had papared the room anew, put a simple felt
carpet on the floor, and furnished the room a little more decently?

Still she did not conceive any suspicion even yet. She thought it
mattered very little where and how she was lodged. She hoped it was,
after all, only for a short time, and consoled herself with the thought
that a cell in a convent would have been worse still. And any thing was
better than her father's house.

"At least," she said, "I shall be quiet and undisturbed here."

Perhaps she was to be morally quiet; for as to any other peace, she was
soon to be taught differently. Accustomed to the profound stillness
of the immense rooms in her father's palace, Henrietta had no idea, of
course, of the incessant movement that goes on in the upper stories
of these Paris lodging-houses, which contain the population of a whole
village, and where the tenants, separated from each other by thin
partition-walls, live, so to say, all in public.

Sleep, under such circumstances, becomes possible only after
long experience; and the poor girl had to pay very dear for her
apprenticeship. It was past four o'clock before she could fall asleep,
overcome by fatigue; and then it was so heavy a sleep, that she was
not aroused by the stir in the whole house as day broke. It was broad
daylight, hence, when she awoke; and a pale sun-ray was gliding into the
room through the torn curtain. The zinc clock pointed at twelve o'clock.
She rose and dressed hastily.

Yesterday, when she rose, she rang her bell, and her maid came in
promptly, made a fire, brought her her slippers, and threw over her
shoulders a warm, wadded dressing-wrapper. But to-day!

This thought carried her back to her father's house. What were they
doing there at this hour? Her escape was certainly known by this time.
No doubt they had sent the servants out in all directions. Her father,
most probably, had gone to call in the aid of the police. She felt
almost happy at the idea of being so safely concealed; and looking
around her chamber, which appeared even more