She hesitated to ascend alone, but finding that the door was not
fastened she pushed it open with her foot, and entered. A scrap of
writing-paper lay within, and arrested her attention by its
freshness. Some human being, then, knew the spot, despite her
surmises. But as the paper had nothing on it no clue was afforded;
yet feeling herself the proprietor of the column and of all around
it her self-assertiveness was sufficient to lead her on. The
staircase was lighted by slits in the wall, and there was no
difficulty in reaching the top, the steps being quite unworn. The
trap-door leading on to the roof was open, and on looking through it
an interesting spectacle met her eye.

A youth was sitting on a stool in the centre of the lead flat which
formed the summit of the column, his eye being applied to the end of
a large telescope that stood before him on a tripod. This sort of
presence was unexpected, and the lady started back into the shade of
the opening. The only effect produced upon him by her footfall was
an impatient wave of the hand, which he did without removing his eye
from the instrument, as if to forbid her to interrupt him.

Pausing where she stood the lady examined the aspect of the
individual who thus made himself so completely at home on a building
which she deemed her unquestioned property. He was a youth who
might properly have been characterized by a word the judicious
chronicler would not readily use in such a connexion, preferring to
reserve it for raising images of the opposite sex. Whether because
no deep felicity is likely to arise from the condition, or from any
other reason, to say in these days that a youth is beautiful is not
to award him that amount of credit which the expression would have