In short, form what fancies I would, I could not but feel a most extraordinary interest in clearing the mystery that seemed to me to hang about the little window in the court. Unconnected with the foot-track and the slipper, the window on the court would have been nothing more than half the courts to be seen in the old quarters of Paris. Or, indeed, the delicate foot-prints, and articles of female luxury would have hardly caught attention, much less sustained it with so feverish curiosity, in any one of the courts opening upon the Rue de Rivoli, or Rue Lafitte.
The concierge next door, I was persuaded, knew more of his inmates than he cared to say. I still, as I have said, glanced my eye, each morning, along the upper angles of the court, and sidled now and then by the gate of the neighboring hotel; but the window wore its usual look—there was the veil, and the placard, and the disjointed, rattling sash; and in the neighboring court was, sometimes, the tall gentleman picking his way carefully over the stones, and sometimes the stumpy figure of a waiting woman.
Some ten days after my chat with the neighbor concierge, I reached the hotel of the abbé an hour earlier than my usual morning visit, and took the occasion to reconnoitre the adjoining courts. The concierge, my acquaintance of the week before, was busy with a bowl of coffee and a huge roll; and, just as I had sidled up to his box for a word with him, who should brush past in great apparent haste, but the pale, thin gentleman who had before attracted my observation.
I determined to step around at once into the open corridor of the abbé's hotel, and see if I could detect any movement—so slight even as the opening or shutting of a door in the chamber of the narrow window.
It was earlier by a half hour at the least than I had ever been in the corridor before. The court was quiet; my eye ran to the little window—at a glance I saw it had not its usual appearance. A light cambric handkerchief, with lace border, was pinned across it from side to side; and just at the moment that I began to scrutinize what seemed to me like a coronet stitched on the corner, a couple of delicate fingers reached over the hem, removed the fastening, first on one side, then on the other—the handkerchief was gone.
It was the work of an instant, and evidently done in haste; but I still caught a glimpse of a delicate female figure—sleeve hanging loose about the arm a short way below the elbow, hair sweeping, half curled and half carelessly over a cheek white as her dress, and an expression, so far as I could judge, of deep sadness.
I shrunk back into a shadow of the corridor, and waited; but there was no more stir at the window. The yellow placard dangled by one fastening; a bit of the veil was visible, nothing else, to tell me of the character of the inmate.
I told the abbé what I had seen.
The abbé closed his grammar, (keeping his thumb at the place,) shook his head slowly from side to side, smiled, lifted his finger in playful menace, and—went on with his lesson.
"Who can it be?" said I.