the defaulter unawares. I expected a reprimand. No. Madame was all goodness. She tendered not even a remonstrance; she testified no shade of surprise. With that consummate tact of hers, in which I believe she was never surpassed by living thing, she even professed merely to have issued forth to taste "la brise du soir".
"Quelle belle nuit!" cried she, looking up at the stars—the moon was now gone down behind the broad tower of Jean Baptiste. "Qui’il fait bon! que l’air est frais".
And, instead of sending me in, she detained me to take a few turns with her down the principal alley. When at last we both re-entered, she leaned affably on my shoulder by way of support in mounting the front door steps; at parting, her cheek was presented to my lips, and “Bon soir, ma bonne amie; dormez bien!” was her kindly adieu for the night.
I caught myself smiling as I lay awake and thoughtful on my couch—smiling at madame. The unction, the suavity of her behavior offered, for one who knew her, a sure token that suspicion of some kind was busy in her brain. From some aperture or summit of observation, through parted bough or open window, she had doubtless caught a glimpse, remote or near, deceptive or instructive, of that night’s transactions. Finely accomplished as she was in the art of surveillance, it was next to impossible that a casket could be thrown into her garden, or an interloper could cross her walks to seek it, without that she, in shaken branch, passing shade, unwonted footfall, or silly murmur (and though Dr. John had spoken very low in the few words he dropped to me, yet the hum of man’s voice pervaded, I thought, the whole conventual ground) without, I say, that she should have caught the intimation of things extraordinary transpiring on her premises. What things, she might by no means see, or that time be able to discover; but a delicious little raveled plot lay tempting her to disentanglements; and in the midst, folded round and round in cobwebs, had she not secured "Mees Lucie", clumsily involved, like the foolish fly she was.
