which Hester decided would do very well for herself. The accommodation was simple but inexpensive; eight francs a week, with attendance, being the rent the widow Limet asked for it.

In a short time John Morley and Hester were seated at the centre table, with an impromptu meal before them of omelettes and dried fruits, and cherries such as are never to be tasted in England. John Morley ate heartily, but in vague amazement. The elderly voluble Frenchwoman trotting in and out with some utterly foreign dish in her hand, and an unintelligible jargon upon her tongue; the bottles of wine she brought in, which she held up between his eye and the light that he might see the golden bubbles imprisoned in them; the ease with which Hester understood and answered; all was odd and inexplicable, but he would give himself up to it. There was something terrible in the past over which a thick curtain had fallen; and he would not lift it so long as it would hang there undisturbed.

That night Hester slept a heavy, dreamless sleep, the sleep of utter exhaustion, when the brain slumbers as profoundly as the body.

Nature exacted this repose rigorously; and now that the immediate strain was over, now that the walls of the city encompassed them about, Hester could yield herself to it. She slept far into the next day; and found, when she awoke, her father sitting at her side, watching her with the care and tenderness of a mother.

CHAPTER IX.

SATURDAY NIGHT.

ON the Saturday evening, when John Morley was fleeing in a panic of fear from his own home and town, he had scarcely passed the chapel before Madame Lawson emerged from the narrow alley opposite to it. It was quite dusk, a season which the old foreigner preferred for her walks, in consequence, as she said, of the impoliteness of the English boys, who generally hailed her appearance with numerous rough greetings. She had left her son comfortably settled for the night, with permission to sleep in her own bed, which preserved its air of state in the English garret. She knocked in vain for some time at John Morley's house-door, but at last she tried the handle, which turned readily in her grasp. It was very quiet within, but a light was shining in the inner room, and she proceeded there boldly. It was John Morley's lamp burning as he had left it, and shedding its accustomed gleam upon the books scattered around it.

Madame puckered her eyebrows, and hummed a little song, but no voice or sound answered her. She took up the lamp and went into the kitchen; all was quiet and orderly there as the servant had left it, with the fire almost dead in the bottom of the grate. Upstairs, with the lamp still in her hands, for it was quite dark now inside the house, proceeded Madame, peering through each open door as she passed it. No one was to be seen. Where then was monsieur; and where was the servant? She could not have held any conversation with either of them, but she wished to see their faces and make her salutation to them. The still solitude daunted her; and she crossed herself several times, muttering a little prayer, as she had hummed a tune downstairs. There was another door open at the end of the passage, and she went on towards it. A faint scent of mould and mildew met her, like the air from a vault. Upon the bare planks she was treading there were spots of blood, but her eyes did not detect them. She entered the room, and looked around her. There, upon the sofa, lay a woman, perfectly motionless, with a shawl laid over her. Madame, frightened

now, but brave with the courage of old age, approached her, and raised the covering from her face.

A marble face, icy cold, with rigid lips and frozen eyelids; the hands also chilly and numb. Yet to her experienced touch,--for in her station an aged woman has felt the clay-cold frigidity of death too often to be easily deceived, there was still a degree of warmth which spoke of life lingering about the heart. She saw quickly that there was little which she could do, and that immediate help was necessary; but how could she make any one understand that she wanted Mr. Grant called in? Her shrewdness, a French subtlety which made her keen at scenting any intrigue, recoiled from the idea of bringing this incident before the public if it could be avoided. She raised Rose's head a little, put a drop or two of eau de vie, which she carried about her, into her mouth; and then locking the front door carefully, to provide against any other intrusion like her own, she hastened as quickly as she could to Grant's house.

Fortunately for the explanation of her errand, she saw, upon approaching the house,