Some weeks passed before I saw her again, and then, as it happened, was able to do her a second small service. The day was wet and windy, the streets muddy. I was hurrying down Bank street and was about to cross an alley-way, which opens on that street, when I heard a little cry behind me, and there rolled past my feet a very neatly done up, small package, with a large seal on it in red wax. It stopped in the middle of the alley directly in front of an advancing dray-horse. I snatched it up and sprang across to the sidewalk, where I waited for the owner, who came hurrying across with anxious face and outstretched hands; and behold! there was my strange, old lady again. She seized the package, and examining it carefully, she muttered, more to herself than to me: “I hope it’s safe, a fortune blowing about the muddy streets like that!” My face must have been an expressive one; at all events she read it like a book, and went on rather sneeringly: “Oh, I’m not mad; at least, not _now_! This does not belong to me; it would not be a fortune if it did; it’s lace--old, rare and very valuable! Had it been ruined? Oh, it makes me quite faint to think of such a chance! I am really very grateful to you, my child!” She spoke her thanks so gracefully that I felt myself grow pink with pleasure. We walked side by side a little way, when she said: “My dear, I’m not a stupid woman, but I can’t quite make you out. Your speech and bearing says one thing, but your being out so much, quite unattended, says another. Oh! I’ve seen you many times since that day at the lake. Then, your clothes--they are too good for poverty; but you wear the same things too often to have generous and well-to-do parents. No, I don’t quite understand.” We were right at the door of the old “Academy” then, and I stopped, saying: “I go in here; there is a rehearsal; I am a member of the company.” I never saw such fire as could leap into those fierce, old eyes of hers--at that moment they fairly blazed. “Here, you!--you with that clean, honest, young face! For fifty years I’ve had a curse, hot and burning in my heart, for theatres and all connected with them!” Then angrily shaking her forefinger at me, she cried: