During a brief interval, employed by the pupils in ruling their books, my eye, ranging carelessly over the benches, observed, for the first time, that the farthest seat in the farthest row--a seat usually vacant--was again filled by the new scholar, the Mdlle.

Henri so ostentatiously recommended to me by the directress.

To-day I had on my spectacles; her appearance, therefore, was clear to me at the first glance; I had not to puzzle over it.

She looked young; yet, had I been required to name her exact age, I should have been somewhat nonplussed; the slightness of her figure might have suited seventeen; a certain anxious and pre-occupied expression of face seemed the indication of riper years.

She was dressed, like all the rest, in a dark stuff gown and a white collar; her features were dissimilar to any there, not so rounded, more defined, yet scarcely regular.