Although to the amatory effusions which reached me by every post I was cold as St. Senanus, when he was so barbarously virtuous as to warn a single lady off his premises at midnight, still to woman’s fascination I was not altogether insensible. By singular accident, I had encountered a girl of extraordinary beauty in my walks; and though her demeanour was modest and retiring, I still fancied that I did not pass her by unnoticed. She was apparently under eighteen; and to the sweetest face imaginable, united a faultless figure. Her mourning dress was simple and becoming; and her general appearance indicated an humble respectability. To have insinuated aught against the constancy of my passion for Isidora, should be, as Lord Ogleby says, “by all the laws of love, death to the offender,” but still, when we passed each other in the street, I found myself involuntarily look round. Once, I imagined that the pretty incognita directed a furtive glance at me; and then, blushing at detection, she bent her eyes upon the ground, and walked hastily on, as if prohibiting any attempt on my part to address her, had such been my intention. But by a strange accident, the introduction that propriety forbade, chance effected. My birth-day came. I thought upon the sybil’s warning in the Park, and I confess that it was anything but an agreeable reminiscence. I was not afraid--for what had I to fear? It was “an air-drawn dagger” that impended; but still I was far from being quite at ease. The day was gloomy; a fog obscured the sun; the dull atmosphere would damp the lightest spirits; I felt its influence on mine; and when I reached St. Paul’s, the gipsy’s warning haunted my memory, and it seemed to announce emphatically a coming evil. Her words rang in my ear, and I thought I heard Her again repeat, “Hector O’Halloran, beware! or your twentieth birth-day will be as bloody as your first.” I mused upon the prophecy--“The ides of March were come.” Well, the sybil said that courage and caution would overcome the threatening danger. Both should be exercised; and a few brief hours would fulfil or falsify the augury. These sombre thoughts were suddenly interrupted, for directly before me, and scarcely distant a dozen yards, I recognised the graceful figure of the fair incognita, whom fortune, good or evil, appeared determined to throw across my path continually. Should I address her as I passed? I wished to do so, but hesitated. Suddenly a man hurried rudely along, and pushing with violence against the pretty unknown, she staggered a few paces and would have fallen on the flagway, had I not sprang forward and caught her in my arms. The scoundrel who had done the mischief, dreading the consequences of his brutality, hastened away, and was speedily lost in the fog.