Suddenly, as she heard the rain-drops pattering like shot against the window-panes, she thought of the poor Count, whom she was keeping out in the wet all the while she was admiring herself; so, putting the extinguisher hastily on the candle, she seized the clothes she had recently discarded, and making them into a bundle, she opened the window as noiselessly as possible, and dropped them into his arms. She had no sooner closed the sash than she began to look with considerable trepidation on what she had done, and proceeded to divest herself of the disguise, lest Miss Wewitz should return and discover all. Nor was it until she began to take off the clothes she had so imprudently received in exchange for her own, that she thought to inquire what she was to do with them on the morrow. To be seen by any one but the Count in them, would be to “let out” the whole affair. “What a great big silly she was!” The exclamation had barely escaped her lips, when her fingers ran against the sharp point of a pin inside the bosom of the dress, and she discovered fastened there a three-cornered note. This was some little relief to her; but in the dark, as she was, how was it possible for her to know what was in it? It was just like her thoughtlessness—why didn’t she examine the dress well before putting it on?—she might have known the Count, after all the consideration he had shown, would never have dreamt of leaving her in such a predicament. And thus she went on talking to herself—reflecting and imagining the future—now regretting her imprudence, and now viewing the coming adventure as a “good bit of fun”—then glorying in the discomfiture of the schoolmistress when her flight was found out—and then thinking over all the Count’s kindnesses to her, and assuring herself of his extreme goodness, until sleep put an end to her reveries. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XX. “Luok, whar i’ th’ nuok o’ yonder tent Yon crew are slyly smugglin’. I warrant ye now thar gang are bent To tek fwonk in by jugglin’; Some cut purse dow-for-nought, nae doubt, That deevilments hev skill in, An’ some’at com’ weel leaden out May gang widout a shillin’.” _Rosley Fair, by J. Stagg._ THE intimate friend and bosom companion of M. le Comte de Sanschemise was ADOLPHE SHEEK, _Peinteur et Philosophe_, and a recent addition to the small French colony that had located itself in the best bed-room of Parthenon House.