e
in fewer moments than I take to write it. I scarcely observed her at the
time. I had no more curiosity to learn whether the face under that veil
was pretty or plain than I cared to know whether the veil itself was
Shetland or Chantilly. At that time Paris was yet new to me: Madame de
Marignan's evil influence was about me; and, occupied as my time and
thoughts were with unprofitable matters, I took no heed of my
fellow-lodgers. Save, indeed, when the groans of that much-tortured
violoncello woke me in the morning to an unwelcome consciousness of the
vicinity of Signor Milanesi, I should scarcely have remembered that I
was not the only inhabitant of the third story.

Now, however, that I spent all my evenings in my own quiet room, I
became, by imperceptible degrees, interested in the unseen inhabitant of
the adjoining apartment. Sometimes, when the house was so still that the
very turning of the page sounded unnaturally loud, and the mere falling
of a cinder startled me, I heard her in her chamber, singing softly to
herself. Every night I saw the light from her window streaming out over
the balcony and touching the evergreens with a midnight glow. Often and
often, when it was so late that even I had given up study and gone to
bed, I heard her reading aloud, or pacing to and fro to the measure of
her own recitations. Listen as I would, I could only make out that these
recitations were poetical fragments--I could only distinguish a certain
chanted metre, the chiming of an occasional rhyme, the rising and
falling of a voice more than commonly melodious.

This vague interest gave place by-and-by to active curiosity. I resolved
to question Madame Bouisse, the _concierge_; and as she, good soul!
loved gossip not wisely, but too well, I soon knew all the little she
had to tell.

Mademoiselle Hortense, it appeared, was the enigma of the third story.
She had resided in the house for more than two years. She earned her
living by her labor; went out teaching all the day; sat up at night,
studying and writing; had no friends; received no visitors; was as
industrious as a bee, and as proud as a princess. Books and flowers were
her only friends, and her only luxuries. Poor as she was, she was
continually filling her shelves with the former, and supplying her
balcony with the latter. She lived frugally, drank no wine, was
singularly silent and reserved, and "like a real lady," said the fat
_concierge_, "paid her rent to the minute