The woman was so absorbed in reverie that she did not notice the steady tramp of her pursuer, but as the number of persons on the street gradually diminished, he prudently fell back, fearing lest her suspicion should be excited.
At a sudden bend in the crooked alley which she rapidly threaded, he lost sight of her, and, running a few yards, he turned the angle just in time to see the flutter of her dress and scarf, as she disappeared through a postern, that opened in a crumbling brick wall.
Above the gate a battered tin sign swung in the wind, and dim letters, almost effaced by elemental warfare, announced, “Adèle Aubin, Blanchisseuse.”
Dr. Grey passed through the postern, and found himself in a narrow, dark court, near a tall, dingy, dilapidated house, where a girl ten years of age sat playing with two ragged, untidy children.
It was a dreary, comfortless, uninviting place, and a greenish slime overspread the lower portions of the wall, and coated the uneven pavement.
From the girl, who chatted with genuine French volubility and freedom, Dr. Grey learned that her father was an attaché of a barber-shop, and her mother a washer and renovater of laces and embroideries. The latter was absent, and, in answer to his inquiries, the child informed him that an upper room in this cheerless building was occupied by a young female lodger, who held no intercourse with its other inmates.
Placing a five-franc piece in her hand, the visitor asked the name of the lodger, but the girl replied that she was known to them only as “La Dentellière,” and lived quite alone in the right-hand room at the top of the third flight of stairs.
The parley had already occupied twenty minutes, when Dr. Grey cut it short by mounting the narrow, winding steps. The atmosphere was close, and redolent of the fumes of dishes not so popular in America as in France, and he saw that the different doors of this old tenement were rented to lodgers who cooked, ate, and slept in the same apartment. At the top of the last dim flight of steps, Dr. Grey paused, almost out of 452 breath; and found himself on a narrow landing-place, fronting two attic rooms. The one on the right was closed, but as he softly took the bolt in his hand and turned it, there floated through the key-hole the low subdued sound of a sweet voice, humming “Infelice.”
It was not the deep, rich, melting voice, that had arrested his drive when first he heard it on the beach, but a plaintive, thrilling echo, full of pathos, yet lacking power; like the notes of birds when moulting-season ends, and the warblers essay their old strains. Cautiously he opened the door wide enough to permit him to observe what passed within.