It was not late, next morning, when Marie Moulin, attended by John Wilmeter, presented herself to Mrs. Gott, as an applicant for admission to the gallery of Mary Monson. The young man did not show himself, on this occasion; though he was near enough to hear the grating of the hinges when the prison-door opened. “C’est bien vous donc, Marie!” said the prisoner, in a quick but pleased salutation. “Mademoiselle!” exclaimed the Swiss. The kisses of women succeeded. The door closed, and John Wilmeter learned no more, on that occasion. [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII. “And can you by no drift of conference Get from him, why he puts on this confusion—” _Hamlet._ There is something imaginative, if not very picturesque, in the manner in which the lawyers of Manhattan occupy the buildings of Nassau street, a thoroughfare which connects Wall street with the Tombs. There they throng, resembling the remains of so many monuments along the Appian way, with a “_siste viator_” of their own, to arrest the footsteps of the wayfarer. We must now transfer the scene to a building in this street, which stands about half-way between Maiden Lane and John Street, having its front plastered over with little tin signs, like a debtor marked by writs, or what are now called “complaints.” Among these signs, which afforded some such pleasant reading as an almanac, was one that bore this simple and reasonably intelligent inscription: “Thomas Dunscomb, 2d floor, in front.” It is somewhat singular that terms as simple as those of first floor, second floor, &c., should not signify the same things in the language of the mother country, and that of this land of progress and liberty. Certain it is, nevertheless, that in American parlance, more especially in that of Manhattan, a first floor is never up one pair of stairs, as in London, unless indeed the flight is that by which the wearied foot-passenger climbs the high stoop to gain an entrance into the building. In other words, an English first floor corresponds with an American second; and, taking that as the point of departure, the same difference exists throughout. Tom Dunscomb’s office (or offices would be the better term) occupied quite half of the second story of a large double house, that had once been the habitation of some private family of note, but which had long been abandoned to the occupation of these ministers of the law. Into those offices it has now become our duty to accompany one who seemed a little strange in that den of the profession, at the very moment he was perfectly at home. “Lawyer Dunscomb in?” demanded this person, who had a decided rustic mien, though his dress had a sort of legal dye on it, speaking to one of the five or six clerks who raised their heads on the stranger’s entrance.