sufficiently content to believe that a woman, a child, or an
invalid was behind its closed windows, without troubling themselves
or the occupant by looking through the glass.

It was a carriage that, thus released, eventually drew up before
the superior public edifice known as the City Hall. From it a
woman, closely veiled, alighted, and quickly entered the building.
A few passers-by turned to look at her, partly from the rarity of
the female figure at that period, and partly from the greater
rarity of its being well formed and even ladylike.

As she kept her way along the corridor and ascended an iron
staircase, she was passed by others more preoccupied in business at
the various public offices. One of these visitors, however,
stopped as if struck by some fancied resemblance in her appearance,
turned, and followed her. But when she halted before a door marked
"Mayor's Office," he paused also, and, with a look of half humorous
bewilderment and a slight glance around him as if seeking for some
one to whom to impart his arch fancy, he turned away. The woman
then entered a large anteroom with a certain quick feminine gesture
of relief, and, finding it empty of other callers, summoned the
porter, and asked him some question in a voice so suppressed by the
official severity of the apartment as to be hardly audible. The
attendant replied by entering another room marked "Mayor's
Secretary," and reappeared with a stripling of seventeen or
eighteen, whose singularly bright eyes were all that was youthful
in his composed features. After a slight scrutiny of the woman--
half boyish, half official--he desired her to be seated, with a
certain exaggerated gravity as if he was over-acting a grown-up
part, and, taking a card from her, reentered his office. Here,