I did not go to bed till nearly two o’clock in the morning, not that my guests stayed late—far from it. They all took their departure about ten o’clock; but the events of the day, trifling as they may seem, had produced upon my mind an effect difficult to be conceived, or even accounted for. I felt convinced that it was Mariette I beheld, and I reasoned upon her state and condition at the time, without guide it is true, but with more accuracy than might have been expected. I by this time knew the situation of emigrants in general in Great Britain. They had been treated with great kindness by the people of the country; subscriptions had been opened for them, aid had been afforded them; but most of them had fled from France in a state of destitution, and were actually in extreme poverty at that moment. Some were eking out the means of subsistence by teaching, others by mere handicraft employments. I had no reason to believe that Madame de Salins had carried much away with her, and on the contrary, I had much reason to believe, from the wretchedness of the lodging in which she must have dwelt in Swallow street, that she was at one time, at least, in actual distress. The beautiful girl I had seen in the carriage was exceedingly simply dressed, and I asked myself whether my pretty Mariette, as so many had done, might not have engaged herself as a governess in some family, and might not, even now, be undergoing all the miseries and scorns of that most painful situation. But this was not all. In regard to Mariette I had been guided in my conclusions—to some extent at all events—by plain, simple reason. There were other impressions, however, upon my mind—other matters for cogitation, with which reason had far less to do, and which gained their importance, perhaps from the active embellishment of imagination, perhaps from some of those deeper and more mysterious operations of the mind, or of the heart, which leave reason far behind in their rapidity, and surpass imagination by their truth. The face of that lady, whom they called Lady Catherine, haunted me. The manner in which she had gazed at me—the eager, keen, almost wild glance which she had given me, the paleness which had overspread her face so suddenly, and the fainting fit into which she had fallen immediately my name was mentioned, were not matters of marvel to me, but of deep thought and consideration. It was very natural, where such a mystery hung over my birth and early fate, that I should feel inclined to connect it with every thing strange and unexplained which I saw. But there was something more than all this—something that I cannot explain or describe; which seemed to bear down all thought and argument against it, and which made me feel a conviction, stronger than any reason could have supplied, that there was some tie between that lady’s fate and my own. I did not recollect her in the least—not one feature in her face was familiar to me; but yet the