"What did you know, Miss. ----?"

"Not _Miss_" she interrupted, while I stopped, not knowing what name
to call her by, "Hortense," she emphasized, "Hortense de Beaumont,
that is my name."

"Well, Hortense, then," I repeated, "what did you know about me?"

She lifted her fine, lustrous eyes to mine, but this time they were
wistful and penetrating; then, taking my hand impulsively, she led me
to a bench that stood a little away from us, saying:

"Come and I will tell you, Amey--for I am going to call you Amey," she
put in parenthetically. We sat down, and without preamble my
interesting friend went on in her pretty foreign way to tell me the
following.

"You see, Amey," she began, "I arrived only last night at this convent
and I have come from such a long way. Oh! I was tired and _ennuyee_
when I reached here, and then every face was so strange. Oh! it was
dreadful" she exclaimed ardently, clasping her small white hands and
looking eagerly into my face. "I could not sleep at all, you may
imagine," she continued, resuming the thread of her narrative, "and
this morning I felt fatigued again and quite lonesome. I went into the
study-hall because I had nothing to do with myself, and, do you know,
Amey," she said with renewed earnestness, "when I saw you, it was so
queer, I felt sure that I knew you already. Your face was so familiar.
I looked at you all the time, while you sat bending over your task,
but you never looked at me. I was asking questions to myself about
you; I thought I should remember you, and while I was noticing you