“Discoveries made by stealth seem to me dishonourable discoveries.”

“Puritaine! I doubt it not. Yet see how my Jesuit’s system works. You know the St. Pierre?”

“Partially.”

He laughed. “You say right—‘partially;’ whereas I know her thoroughly. There is the difference. She played before me the amiable, offered me patte de velours, caressed, flattered, fawned on me. Now, I am accessible to a woman’s flattery—accessible against my reason. Though never pretty, she was, when I first knew her, young, or knew how to look young. Like all her countrywomen, she had the art of dressing; she had a certain cool, easy, social assurance which spared me the pain of embarrassment——”

“Monsieur, that must have been unnecessary. I never saw you embarrassed in my life.”

“Mademoiselle, you know little of me. I can be embarrassed as a petite pensionnaire. There is a fund of modesty and diffidence in my nature——”

“Monsieur, I never saw it.”

“Mademoiselle, it is there. You ought to have seen it.”

“Monsieur, I have observed you in public—on platforms, in tribunes, before titles and crowned heads—and you were as easy as you are in the third division.”

“Mademoiselle, neither titles nor crowned heads excite my modesty, and publicity is very much my element. I like it well, and breathe in it quite freely; but—but—in short, here is the sentiment brought into action, at this very moment. However, I disdain to be worsted by it. If, mademoiselle, I were a marrying man (which I am not; and you may spare yourself the trouble of any sneer you may be contemplating at the thought), and found it necessary to ask a lady whether she could look upon me in the light of a future husband, then would it be proved that I am as I say—modest.”

I quite believed him now; and, in believing, I honoured him with a sincerity of esteem which made my heart ache.

“As to the St. Pierre,” he went on, recovering himself, for his voice had altered a little, “she once intended to be Madame Emanuel; and I don’t know whither I might have been led but for yonder little lattice with the light. Ah, magic lattice! what miracles of discovery hast thou wrought! Yes,” he pursued, “I have seen her rancours, her vanities, her levities—not only here, but elsewhere; I have witnessed what bucklers me against all her arts. I am safe from poor Zélie.

“And my pupils,” he presently recommenced, “those blondes jeunes filles, so mild and meek—I have seen the most reserved romp like boys, the demurest snatch grapes from the walls, shake pears from the trees. When the English teacher came, I saw her, marked her early preference for this alley, noted her taste for seclusion, watched her well, long before she and I came to speaking terms. Do you recollect my once coming silently and offering you a little knot of white violets when we were strangers?”

“I recollect it. I dried the violets, kept them, and have them still.”

“It pleased me when you took them peacefully and promptly, without prudery—that sentiment which I ever dread to excite, and which, when it is revealed in eye or gesture, I vindictively detest. To return. Not only did I watch you, but often—especially at eventide—another guardian angel was noiselessly hovering near. Night after night my cousin Beck has stolen down yonder steps, and glidingly pursued your movements when you did not see her.”

“But, monsieur, you could not from the distance of that window see what passed in this garden at night?”