I was now in love, and cared as little for Boards of Directors and resolutions passed in committee as for the ordinances of the Grand Lama. It might rain mandamuses and warrants, they had no power to trouble me. As I wended my way to No. 4 with my bowl of ice, I felt like a votary bearing his offering to the shrine of his patron saint. My gift might lie on the altar, but the incense of my devotion soared up to heaven. I would gladly have visited her every hour, but she would only permit me to come twice a day. I was also timid, and when Virginie said my ten minutes was up I was dismissed. I tried to bribe Virginie, but the unworthy creature imagined, with the levity of her nation, I had designs on her own affections, and threatened to denounce me to her mistress,--a menace which cost me much mortification and more money. I don't know that the cure made great progress,--perhaps I have learned since why this was so; at all events, I pursued my treatment with assiduity, and was rewarded with a few soft-voiced words, as thus: “How kind you are!” “What a gentle hand you have!” “How pleasant that ice is!” At length she was able to move about the room. I wished to offer my arm, but she declined. Virginie was strong enough to support her. How I detested that woman! But for her, how many more opportunities had I enjoyed of offering small services and attentions! Her very presence was a perpetual restraint. She never took her eyes off me while I was in the room with her mistress,--black-beady, inexpressive eyes for the most part, but with something devilish in their inscrutability that always frightened me. That she saw the passion that was consuming me, that she read me in my alternate paroxysm of delight or despair, was plain enough to me; but I could not make her my friend. She would take my presents freely, but always with the air of one whose silence was worth buying at any price, but whose co-operation or assistance no sum could compass. Her very mode of accepting my gifts had something that smote terror into me. She never thanked me, nor even affected gratitude. She would shake her head mournfully and gloomily, as though matters had come to a pretty pass between us, and as though some dreadful reckoning must one day be expected to account for all this corruption. “Ah, Monsieur Gosslett,” said she one day with a sigh, “what a precipice we are all standing beside! Have you thought of the ruin you are leading us to?” These were very strange words; and though I took my watch and chain from my pocket, and gave them to her in order to induce her to explain her meaning, she only burst into tears and rushed out of the room. Was I then the happiest of mortals or the most wretched? Such was the problem that drove sleep that long night from my eyelids, and found me still trying to solve it when the day broke.