"It is strange. I know not what to think," said Laronde, when his friend concluded. "If it had been a white girl I could have understood that it might be your daughter in disguise, though even in this case there would have been several reasons against the theory, for, in the first place, you tell me that your daughter--your Hester--is very pretty, and no pretty English girl could go about this city in any disguise without being discovered at once. Now you tell me that this girl was black--a negress?" "Ay, as black as a coal," responded the merchant. "Well, if, as you say, your Hester is pretty--" "Pretty, man! She's not pretty," interrupted the Englishman impatiently; "I tell you she is beautiful!" "Of course, I understand," returned the other, with a smile that the darkness of the place concealed, "I should have said beautiful! Well, thick lips and flat nose and high cheek-bones and woolly hair are, you know, incompatible with beauty as understood by Englishmen--" "Or Frenchmen either," added Sommers. "That's quite true, Laronde, though I must confess that I paid no attention to her face when she was approaching me, and after she dropped the biscuits in my lap she was so far past that I only saw a bit of her black cheek and her back, which latter, you know, was enveloped from head to foot in that loose blue cotton thing which does not tell much about the wearer." "True, true," returned the Frenchman; "and, after all, even if the girl's features had not been negro-like, you could not have been sure that it was her, for some of the blacks who come from the interior of Africa have features quite as classical as our own." "Laronde," said the merchant impressively, "I wonder to hear you, who have a daughter of your own, suggest that I could fail to recognise my Hester in any disguise. Why, if she were to paint her face scarlet and her nose pea-green I'd see through it by the beautiful shape of the features and the sweet expression of her face." "Forgive me, Monsieur Sommers, I doubt not that you would. As to your reference to _my_ daughter, you forget that she was a little child when I last saw her, so I have no experience of a father's powers of penetrating disguises." Laronde sighed deeply at this point, and then hurriedly continued, as if to prevent further reference to his own sorrows. "It is possible, however," he said, "that she may pass you again to-morrow, and so give you another opportunity of seeing her features. But let me ask, my friend, what will you do if you discover that she _is_ your Hester?" "Do?" exclaimed the merchant, with an energetic action that caused his fetters to rattle. "I--I--I'll--well--I don't know what I'll do!"