head she wore a jaunty small lace cap, which seemed to tell, in
conjunction with her other appointments, that her circumstances were
comfortable.

The little girl who sat next to her was the youngest of her two
daughters, and might be about thirteen years of age. Her name was
Matilda, but infantine circumstances had invested her with the
nickname of Mimmy, by which her mother always called her. A nice,
pretty, playful little girl was Mimmy Thompson, wearing two long
tails of plaited hair hanging, behind her head, and inclined
occasionally to be rather loud in her sport.

Mrs. Thompson had another and an elder daughter, now some fifteen
years old, who was at school in Le Puy; and it was with reference to
her tuition that Mrs. Thompson had taken up a temporary residence at
the Hotel des Ambassadeurs in that town. Lilian Thompson was
occasionally invited down to dine or breakfast at the inn, and was
visited daily at her school by her mother.

"When I'm sure that she'll do, I shall leave her there, and go back
to England," Mrs. Thompson had said, not in the purest French, to
the neighbour who always sat next to her at the table d'hote, the
gentleman, namely, to whom we have above alluded. But still she had
remained at Le Puy a month, and did not go; a circumstance which was
considered singular, but by no means unpleasant, both by the
innkeeper and by the gentleman in question.

The facts, as regarded Mrs. Thompson, were as follows:- She was the
widow of a gentleman who had served for many years in the civil
service of the East Indies, and who, on dying, had left her a