cloak drawn
about the lower part of my face, as if I felt the east wind, I proceeded
down the street until I reached the opening of the lane. Without looking
up I turned briskly into it.

When I had gone ten paces past the turning, however, I stopped and,
gazing about me, began to take in my surroundings as fast as I could.
The lane, which seemed little frequented, was eight or nine feet wide,
unpaved, and full of ruts. The high blank wall of a garden rose on one
side of it, on the other the still higher wall of a house; and both
were completely devoid of windows, a feature which I recognised with the
utmost dismay. For it completely upset all my calculations. In vain
I measured with my eye the ten paces I had come; in vain I looked up,
looked this way and that. I was nonplussed. No window opened on the lane
at that point, nor, indeed, throughout its length. For it was bounded to
the end, as far as I could see, by dead-walls as of gardens.

Recognising, with a sinking heart, what this meant, I saw in a moment
that all the hopes I had raised on Simon Fleix's discovery were
baseless. Mademoiselle had dropped the velvet bow, no doubt, but not
from a window. It was still a clue, but one so slight and vague as to be
virtually useless, proving only that she was in trouble and in need of
help; perhaps that she had passed through this lane on her way from one
place of confinement to another.

Thoroughly baffled and dispirited, I leant for awhile against the wall,
brooding over the ill-luck which seemed to attend me in this, as in
so many previous adventures. Nor was the low voice of conscience,
suggesting that such failures arose from mismanagement rather than
from ill-luck, slow to make itself heard. I reflected that if I had not
allowed myself to be robbed of the gold token, mademoiselle would have
trusted me; that if I had not brought her to so poor an abode as my
mother's, she would not have been cajoled into following a stranger;
finally, that if I had remained with her, and sent Simon to attend to
the horses in my place, no stranger would have gained access to her.

But it has never been my way to accept defeat at the first offer, and
though I felt these self-reproaches to be well deserved, a moment's
reflection persuaded me that in the singular and especial providence
which had brought the velvet knot safe to my hands I ought to find
encouragement. Had Madame de Bruhl not picked it up it would have
continued to lie