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 abbe what I had seen. The abbe 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. "Indeed, I cannot tell you, _mon ami_," said the abbe, laying down his book with a look of despair. The morning after I was again in the corridor a full half hour before my usual time, but the window wore its usual air. The next day, again I was an hour beforehand, and the abbe had not put off his priest robe, in which he goes to morning mass; still there was no handkerchief at the little window--no wavy mesh of hair--no taper arm--no shadowy form moving in the dim chamber. I had arranged to leave for the south in a few days, and was more than ever anxious for some explication of the mystery. A single further mode only occurred to me; I would go to the concierge next door, and under pretence of looking for rooms, would have him conduct me through his hotel. It had dismal corridors, and steeper stairways than even the abbe's. I was careless about the second and the third floors; and it was not till we had mounted a half dozen crazy pair of stairs, that I began to scrutinize narrowly the doors, and sometimes to ask if this or that chamber was occupied. I made my way always to the windows of the rooms shown me, in hope of seeing the little court I knew so well, and the abbe's half-open corridor, and yet in half fear, that I might, after all, be looking from the very window about which hung so perplexing mystery.