Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/186

172 "I guess," said Ormizon to himself,—"I guess D. Personette is my man; though, on second thoughts, D. Personette is probably a woman. I wonder whether she is an old woman or a young woman, a pretty woman or an ugly woman, a married woman, or a single woman, or a widow. This," sniffing at the paper,—"this perfume suggests something rather nice. So does the chirography. It's elegant and graceful, and at the same time free from those nonsensical hair-lines and flourishes. Yes, I suspect Still, you can't be sure; and quite possibly she's not a woman, after all. These Frenchmen often write lady-like hands, and scent their letters as they do their gloves and handkerchiefs. Well, at any rate, I shall soon find out ; for I'll go at once and pay D. Personette a visit."

He had his boots blacked, and put on his best frock-coat. There was no telling what sort of person this Personette might be; and he surmised that he should perhaps want to create a favorable impression. If she were by chance a young and pretty woman, now, you understand—! Then he left his house, and after a walk of five or fewer minutes—for he himself dwelt in Rue Gay-Lussac—was catechising the concierge of No. —, Rue Soufflot.

"Monsieur Personette?" he demanded, in an off-hand way.

As the conclusion of some debate with himself, he had resolved to assume, for the purposes of a working hypothesis, the masculinity of his correspondent; impelled to do so, in part, it may be, because, secretly hoping that the truth was otherwise, he thus avoided from the outset the risk of a disappointment.

"Monsieur Personette?" the concierge rejoined, with a dubious shrug and gesture. "Mademoiselle Personette, you wish to say, is it not, monsieur?"

"Ah, yes; precisely; Mademoiselle Personette. À quel étage?"

And so a woman she was, in point of fact. Yet—mademoiselle? Dire potentialities resided in that title mademoiselle. Mademoiselle Personette? A vision of ancient spinsterhood, gray, tall, angular, ascetic, with thin lips and a perpetual frown, clad in neat though rusty alpaca, flitted rapidly before our hero's mental eye. Mademoiselle Personette Ah, well, it didn't much matter one way or the other; and, anyhow, time would show.

"Cinquième à gauche," the concierge had meanwhile announced, and retired within his den.

Ormizon tugged up five slippery flights of stairs, redolent of beeswax, turpentine, and bygone cookery, and pulled the tasselled bell-cord that dangled outside the door at the left of the topmost landing. The door at the right was decorated with a tin sign, proclaiming, "Dr. Maccarin, Dentiste Américain." It didn't look like a very American name; but it gave Ormizon for an instant a glow of compatriotic feeling.

"Mademoiselle Personette, is she at home?" he asked of the woman who presently opened to him, doubtful whether this might not be Mademoiselle Personette herself.

"Ah, oui, monsieur," she answered, with that peculiar Parisian inflection which no combination of letters can be made to render, and