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156 thanking you very much, all the same. Good-day!

"Good-day!" replies the "commandor," turning at the same time to his desk again.

He had none the less treated me with undeserved kindness, and I was grateful to him for it—and I would know how to appreciate it too. I made a resolution not to return to him until I could take something with me, that satisfied me perfectly; something that would astonish the "commandor" a bit, and make him order me to be paid half-a-sovereign without a moment's hesitation. I went home, and tackled my writing once more.

During the following evenings, as soon as it got near eight o'clock and the gas was lit, the following thing happened regularly to me.

As I come out of my room to take a walk in the streets after the labour and troubles of the day, a lady, dressed in black, stands under the lamp-post exactly opposite my door.

She turns her face towards me and follows me with her eyes when I pass her by—I remark that she always has the same dress on, always the same thick veil that conceals her face and falls over her breast, and that