At the expiration of a month, spent in the most diligent yet unsuccessful efforts to obtain some information of the wanderer, Dr. Grey began to feel discouraged,—to yield to melancholy forebodings that an untimely death had ended her struggles and suffering.
Once, while pacing the walks in the Champs-Elysées, he caught a glimpse of a face that recalled Salome’s, and started eagerly forward; but it proved that of a Parisian bonne, who was romping with her juvenile charge.
Again, one afternoon, as he came out of the Church of St. Sulpice, his heart bounded at sight of a woman who leaned against the railing, and watched the play of the fountain. When he approached her and peered eagerly into her countenance, 450 blue eyes and yellow curls mocked his hopes. One morning, while he walked slowly along the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, his attention was attracted by the glitter of pretty baubles in the Maison de la Pensée, and he entered the establishment to purchase something for Jessie.
While waiting for his parcel, a woman came out of a rear apartment and passed into the street, and, almost snatching his package from the counter, he followed.
A few yards in advance was a graceful but thin figure, clad in a violet-colored muslin, with a rather dingy silk scarf wound around her shoulders. A straw hat, with a wreath of faded pink roses, drooped over her face, and streamers of black lace hung behind, while over the whole she had thrown a thin gray veil.
Dr. Grey had not seen a feature, but the pose of the shoulders, the haughty poise of the head, the quick, nervous, elastic step, and, above all, the peculiar, free, childish swinging of the left arm, made his despondent heart throb with renewed hope.
Keeping sufficiently near not to lose sight of her, he walked on and on, down cross streets, up narrow alleys, towards a quarter of the city with which he was unacquainted. The woman never looked back, rarely turned her head, even to glance at those who passed her, and only once she paused before a flower-stall, and seemed to price a bunch of carnations, which she smelled, laid down again, and then hurried on.
Dr. Grey quickly paid for the cluster, and hastened after her.
In turning a corner, she dropped a small parcel that she had carried under her scarf, and as she stooped to pick it up, her veil floated off. She caught it ere it reached the ground, and when she raised her hands to spread it over her hat, the loose open sleeves of her dress slipped back, and there, on the left arm, was a long, zigzag scar, like a serpentine bracelet.
With great difficulty Dr. Grey stifled a cry of joy, and waited until she had gained some yards in advance.