was the night on which
disappeared the sewing girl of which you have so often spoken, but I
knew nothing of that, my thoughts were far from my own home and its
concerns. You may judge what a state of mind I was in when I tell you
that I even thought at one moment while I paused before the gate leading
into ---- Street that I saw the face of her with whom my thoughts were
ever busy, peering upon me through the bars.

"You tell me that I did see a girl there, and that it was the one who
had lived as sewing woman in my house; it may be so, but at the time I
considered it a vision of my wife, and the remembrance of it, coming as
it did after my repeated failures to encounter her in the street, worked
a change in my plans. For regard it as weakness or not, the recollection
that the vision I had seen wore the garments of a working-woman rather
than a lady, acted upon me like a warning not to search for her any
longer among the resorts of the well-dressed, but in the regions of
poverty and toil. I therefore took to wanderings such as I have no heart
to describe. Nor do I need to, if, as you have informed me, I have been
followed.

"The result was almost madness. Though deep in my heart I felt a
steadfast trust in the purity of her intentions, the fear of what she
might have been driven to by the awful poverty and despair I every day
saw seething about me, was like hot steel in brain and heart. Then her
father and her brother! To what might they not have forced her, innocent
and loving soul though she was! Drinking the dregs of a cup such as I
had never considered it possible for me to taste, I got so far as to
believe that her eyes would yet flash upon me from beneath some of the
tattered shawls I saw sullying the forms of the young girls upon which I
hourly stumbled. Yes, and even made a move to see my cousin, if haply I
could so win upon her compassion as to gain her consent to shelter the
poor creature of my dreams in case the necessity came. But my heart
failed me at the sight of her cold face above the splendor she had
bought with her charms, and I was saved a humiliation I might never have
risen above.

"At last, one day I saw a girl--no, it was not she, but her hair was
similar to hers in hue, and the impulse to follow her was irresistible.
I did more than that, I spoke to her. I asked her if she could tell me
anything of one whose locks were golden red like hers--But I need not
tell you what I said nor what she repl