It was Gustave Lenoble's habit to cross the gardens of the Luxembourg every morning, on his way from the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle to the Ecole de Droit. Sometimes, when he was earlier than usual, he carried a book with him, and paced one of the more obscure alleys, reading for an odd half-hour before he went to the daily mill-grinding in the big building beyond those quiet gardens. Walking with his book one morning--it was a volume of Boileau, which the student knew by heart, and the pages whereof did not altogether absorb his attention--he passed and repassed a bench on which a lady sat, pensive and solitary, tracing shapeless figures on the ground with the point of her parasol. He glanced at her somewhat carelessly the first time of passing, more curiously on the second occasion, and the third time with considerable attention. Something in her attitude--helplessness, hopelessness, nay indeed, despair itself, all expressed in the drooping head, the listless hand tracing those idle characters on the gravel--enlisted the sympathies of Gustave Lenoble. He had pitied her even before his gaze had penetrated the cavernous depths of the capacious bonnet of those days; but one glimpse of the pale plaintive face inspired him with compassion unspeakable. Never had he seen despair more painfully depicted on the human countenance--a despair that sought no sympathy, a sorrow that separated the sufferer from the outer world. Never had he seen a face so beautiful, even in despair. He could have fancied it the face of Andromache, when all that made her world had been reft from her; or of Antigone, when the dread fiat had gone forth--that funeral rites or sepulture for the last accursed scion of an accursed race there were to be none. He put Boileau into his pocket. That glimpse of a suffering human mind, which had been unconsciously revealed to him, possessed an interest more absorbing than the grandest flight of poet and satirist. As he passed for the fifth time, he looked at the mournful lady still more searchingly, and this time the sad eyes were lifted, and met his pitying looks. The beautiful lips moved, and murmured something in tones so tremulous as to be quite unintelligible. The student took off his hat, and approached the lady, deferential as knight-errant of old awaiting the behest of his liege mistress. "In what can I have the happiness to be agreeable to you, madame?" "You are very good, monsieur," murmured the lady in very decent French, but with an accent unmistakably foreign--English, as Gustave opined. "I--I--am quite a stranger in Paris, and--and--I have heard there are numerous lodging-houses in this quarter--where one may obtain a lodging--cheaply. I have asked several nursemaids, and other women, in the gardens this morning; but they seem very stupid, and can tell me nothing; and I do not care to ask at the hotel where I am staying."