It was noonday in the town of Malines, or Mechlin, as the English usually term it: the Sabbath bell had summoned the inhabitants to divine worship; and the crowd that had loitered round the Church of St. Rembauld, had gradually emptied itself within the spacious aisles of the sacred edifice. A young man was standing in the street, with his eyes bent on the ground, and apparently listening for some sound; for, without raising his looks from the rude pavement, he turned to every corner of it with an intent and anxious expression of countenance; he held in one hand a staff, in the other a long slender cord, the end of which trailed on the ground; every now and then he called, with a plaintive voice, "Fido, Fido, come back! Why hast thou deserted me?" Fido returned not: the dog, wearied of confinement, had slipped from the string, and was at play with his kind in a distant quarter of the town, leaving the blind man to seek his way as he might to his solitary inn. By and by a light step passed through the street, and the young stranger's face brightened-- "Pardon me," said he, turning to the spot where his quick ear had caught the sound, "and direct me, if you are not by chance much pressed for a few moment's time, to the hotel _Mortier d'or_." It was a young woman, whose dress betokened that she belonged to the middling class of life, whom he thus addressed. "It is some distance hence, sir," said she, "but if you continue your way straight on for about a hundred yards, and then take the second turn to your right hand--" "Alas!" interrupted the stranger, with a melancholy smile, "your direction will avail me little; my dog has deserted me, and I am blind!" There was something in these words, and in the stranger's voice, which went irresistibly to the heart of the young woman. "Pray forgive me," she said, almost with tears in her eyes, "I did not perceive your--" misfortune, she was about to say, but she checked herself with an instinctive delicacy. "Lean upon me, I will conduct you to the door; nay, sir," observing that he hesitated, "I have time enough to spare, I assure you." The stranger placed his hand on the young woman's arm, and though Lucille was naturally so bashful that even her mother would laughingly reproach her for the excess of a maiden virtue, she felt not the least pang of shame, as she found herself thus suddenly walking through the streets of Malines, alone with a young stranger, whose dress and air betokened him of a rank superior to her own.