ich he occupied a few rooms on the ground
floor behind his shop--backed on to a small uncultivated garden which
ended in a tall brick wall, the meeting-place of all the felines in
the neighbourhood, and in which there was a small postern gate, now
disused. This gate gave on a narrow cul-de-sac--grandiloquently named
Passage Corneille--which was flanked on the opposite side by the tall
boundary wall of an adjacent convent.

That cul-de-sac was marked out from the very first in my mind as our
objective. Around and about it, as it were, did I build the edifice of
my schemes, aided by the ever-willing Sarah. The old maid threw
herself into the affair with zest, planning and contriving like a
veritable strategist; and I must admit that she was full of resource
and invention. We were now in mid-May and enjoying a spell of hot
summer weather. This gave the inventive Sarah the excuse for using the
back garden as a place wherein to sit in the cool of the evening in
the company of her niece.

Ah, you see the whole thing now at a glance, do you not? The postern
gate, the murky night, the daring lover, the struggling maiden, the
willing accomplices. The actors were all there, ready for the curtain
to be rung up on the palpitating drama.

Then it was that a brilliant idea came into my brain. It was born on
the very day that I realized with indisputable certainty that the
lovely Leah was not in reality in love with Rochez. He fatuously
believed that she was ready to fall into his arms, that only maidenly
timidity held her back, and that the moment she had been snatched from
her father's house and found herself in the arms of her adoring lover,
she would turn to him in the very fullness of love and confidence.

But I knew better. I had caught a look now and again--an undefinable
glance, which told me the whole pitiable tale. She did not love
Rochez; and in the drama which we were preparing to enact the curtain
would fall on his rapture and her unhappiness.

Ah, Sir! imagine what my feelings were when I realized this! This fair
girl, against whom we were all conspiring like so many traitors, was
still ignorant of the fatal brink on which she stood. She chatted and
coquetted and smiled, little dreaming that in a very few days her
happiness would be wrecked and she would be linked for life to a man
whom she could never love. Rochez's idea, of course, was primarily to
get hold of her fortune. I had already ascertained for him, throug