h deaf-mute, in whom
his discernment, though young as yet, enabled him to recognize a girl of
African, or at least of Sicilian, origin. The child had the golden-brown
color of a Havana cigar, eyes of fire, Armenian eyelids with lashes of
very un-British length, hair blacker than black; and under this almost
olive skin, sinews of extraordinary strength and feverish alertness. She
looked at Rodolphe with amazing curiosity and effrontery, watching his
every movement.

"To whom does that little Moresco belong?" he asked worthy Madame
Bergmann.

"To the English," Monsieur Bergmann replied.

"But she never was born in England!"

"They may have brought her from the Indies," said Madame Bergmann.

"I have been told that Miss Lovelace is fond of music. I should be
delighted if, during my residence by the lake to which I am condemned by
my doctor's orders, she would allow me to join her."

"They receive no one, and will not see anybody," said the old gardener.

Rodolphe bit his lips and went away, without having been invited into
the house, or taken into the part of the garden that lay between the
front of the house and the shore of the little promontory. On that side
the house had a balcony above the first floor, made of wood, and covered
by the roof, which projected deeply like the roof of a chalet on all
four sides of the building, in the Swiss fashion. Rodolphe had loudly
praised the elegance of this arrangement, and talked of the view from
that balcony, but all in vain. When he had taken leave of the Bergmanns
it struck him that he was a simpleton, like any man of spirit and
imagination disappointed of the results of a plan which he had believed
would succeed.

In the evening he, of course, went out in a boat on the lake, round
and about the spit of land, to Brunnen and to Schwytz, and came in at
nightfall. From afar he saw the window open and brightly lighted; he
heard the sound of a piano and the tones of an exquisite voice. He made
the boatman stop, and gave himself up to the pleasure of listening to an
Italian air delightfully sung. When the singing ceased, Rodolphe landed
and sent away the boat and rowers. At the cost of wetting his feet, he
went to sit down under the water-worn granite shelf crowned by a thick
hedge of thorny acacia, by the side of which ran a long lime avenue in
the Bergmanns' garden. By the end of an hour he heard steps and voices
just above him, but the words that reached his ears were all