not ingratitude, but rather incapacity for any feeling except that one
great sorrow which seemed to absorb her mind.

Gustave wondered what calamity could thus overwhelm one so young and
beautiful.

The lady was quite silent during the little walk from the gardens to the
Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and Gustave observed her attentively as he
walked by her side. She was evidently not more than four-and-twenty years
of age, and she was certainly the prettiest woman he had ever seen. It
was a fair delicate English beauty, a little worn and faded, as if by
care, but idealized and sublimated in the process. At her brightest this
stranger must have been strikingly beautiful; in her sorrow she was
touchingly lovely. It was what Gustave's countrymen call a _beaute
navrante_.

Gustave watched her, and wondered about her. The dress she wore was
sufficiently elegant, but had lost the gloss of newness. Her shawl, which
she carried as gracefully as a Frenchwoman, was darned. Gustave perceived
the neat careful stitches, and divined the poverty of the wearer. That
she should be poor was no subject for surprise; but that she, so
sorrowful, so lonely, should seek a home in a strange city, was an enigma
not easy to solve.

To Madame Magnotte Gustave introduced the stranger. She gave just one
look round the dreary saloon; but to Gustave's fancy that one look seemed
eloquent. "Ah me!" it said; "is this the fairest home I am to find upon
this inhospitable earth?"

"She does not seem to belong to this world," the young man thought, as