She was very grateful, and I in my turn grew to love her dearly; so dearly that when her father, the count, came to take her home, in consequence of the death of her mother, I felt as if I had lost a little sister.
Ever after this our little snow flower was a fragrant memory to me. I often thought of her, and wondered as I watched the white clouds moving across the summer sky, or the silver moon shining in the heavens, whether she too was looking out upon the same fair scene from the other side the sea and thinking of her some time sister of Miss Melford's school.
II.
After Many Days.
Some years after I had left the school financial difficulties beset my uncle's affairs. Aunt Ducie died in the midst of them, and Uncle Gervase did not long survive. Our household gods went under the auctioneer's hammer, our beautiful home became the home of strangers, and I went to live in an obscure quarter of a distant town. My means being exceeding small, I took rooms in a small house in a semi-rural suburb, and from thence began to look for work for pen and pencil. I had learned to draw, and had succeeded in one or two small attempts at story telling, and with my pen and pencil for crutches, and with youth and hope on my side, I started out with nervous confidence upon the highway of fame.
Cherry-Tree Avenue was a long, narrow street within a stone's throw of the grim, grey castellated towers of the county gaol, and the weekly tenants who took the small, red-brick houses were continually changing.
Facing us was No. 3, Magdala Terrace, a house which was empty for some weeks, but one April evening a large van full of new furniture drove up to it, followed by a respectable looking man and woman of the artisan class, who soon began to set the house in order. Before sleep had fallen on the shabby street a cab drove up to No. 3, and from it stepped a woman, tall, slight, and closely veiled. I had been to the pillar box to post an answer to an advertisement, and it happened that I passed the door of the newly let house as the cab drew up. Without waiting to be summoned, the trim young woman came out to welcome the new-comer, and said in French:
"Madame, the place is poor, but clean, and quiet, and," lowering her voice, "fitted for observation."
In spite of my own anxieties I wondered who the stranger could be, and why the little house was to be an observatory. Then I remembered the vicinity of the big gaol, and thought that madame might have an interest in one of the black sheep incarcerated there.
Very soon strange rumours began to circulate amongst the dwellers in the avenue. The bright young woman was madame's foster sister; madame herself was of high degree, a countess, or one of even nobler rank, travelling in disguise; the quiet, dark young man, her foster sister's husband, was a woodcarver, who was out of work and only too glad to serve the foreign lady, who out of generous pity had come to stay with them.
I, of course, gave no credence to these seemingly absurd reports, but, all the same, I was aware that there was a mystery at No. 3. The lady was young, beautiful, and distinguished looking, she had dark, pathetic, haunting eyes, which reminded me forcibly of other eyes I had seen, but when and where I could not recall; and though her dresses were dark, they were chic, the word Paris was writ plain on all her toques.