Manton.
CHAPTER XV.
DELECTABLE GLIMPSES BEHIND THE CURTAIN.
Now, with a bitter smile, whose light did shine
Like a fiend’s hope upon her lips and eyne.
Shelley
Turn we now to that large and mysterious house, to which we have before referred, near the corner of Broadway and Eighth Street. We will pass the greasy lintels, into the wide and dirty entry, climb those five flights of stairs, turn down the long, dark passage, and pause before a door, just one beyond that which we have had occasion to remember in the course of this narrative.
We will take the liberty to enter. The scene presents the woman, Marie, reclining on a lounge, holding a note in her hand, which she seems to have read and re-read with a peculiar look of puzzled inquiry.
The impish-looking daughter, to whom we have before referred, was seated in a chair, behind the woman’s head, and out of her sight. The creature seemed to have much ado to keep from laughing outright, for her face was screwed into all sorts of contortions in the effort to subdue it, as she peeped over her mother’s shoulder, and watched her puzzled looks and bewildered gestures.
“Well!” said the mother, as if speaking to herself, “if one could only comprehend how he came to write this to me—it seems to contain a great deal. Upon my word, it appears a beautiful snatch of rhyme, and to convey quite a confession—only I don’t understand—it reads as if it were an answer to something that had gone before.” She reads—
Angels a subtler name may know,