this same tree one miserable night Lucy buried her precious letters, and
"meant also to bury a grief" and her great affection for Dr. John. Here
she had leant her brow against Methuselah's knotty trunk and uttered to
herself those brave words of renunciation which must have wrung her
heart: "Good-night, Dr. John; you are good, you are beautiful, _but you
are not mine_. Good-night, and God bless you!" Here she held pleasant
converse with M. Paul, and with him, spell-bound, saw the ghost of the
nun descend from the leafy shadows overhead and, sweeping close past
their wondering faces, disappear behind yonder screen of shrubbery into
the darkness of the summer night. By that tall tree next the class-rooms
the ghost was wont to ascend to meet its material sweetheart, Fanshawe,
in the great garret beneath yonder skylight,--the garret where Lucy
retired to read Dr. John's letter, and wherein M. Paul confined her to
learn her part in the vaudeville for Madame Beck's _fête_-day. In this
nook where we sat, Crimsworth, "The Professor," had walked and talked
with and almost made love to Mademoiselle Reuter, and from yonder window
overlooking the alley had seen that perfidious fair one in dalliance
with his employer, M. Pelet, beneath these pear-trees. From that window
M. Paul watched Lucy as she sat or walked in the _allée défendue_,
dogged by Madame Beck; from the same window were thrown the love-letters
which fell at Lucy's feet sitting here.

Leaves from the overhanging boughs were plucked for us as souvenirs of
the place; then, reverently traversing once more the narrow alley so
often traced in weariness by Charlotte Bronté, we turned away. From the
garden we entered the long and spacious class-room of the first and
second divisions. A movable partition divides it across the middle when
the classes are in session; the floor is of bare boards cleanly scoured.
There are long ranges of desks and benches upon either side, and a lane
through the middle leads up to a raised platform at the end of the room,