He knew he might as well look for a needle in a haystack as his whimsical beloved through the streets of London--dismal and dark now as the streets of Luxor and Tadmor in Egypt; and he wisely resolved to spare himself and his Spanish leathers boots the trial of a one-handed game of "hide-and-go-to-seek." Wisdom, like Virtue, is its own reward; and scarcely had he come to this laudable conclusion, when, by the feeble glimmer of the house-lamps, he saw a figure that made his heart bound, flitting through the night-gloom toward him.

He would have known that figure on the sands of Sahara, in an Indian jungle, or an American forest--a tall, slight, supple figure, bending and springing like a bow of steel, queenly and regal as that of a young empress.

It was draped in a long cloak reaching to the ground, in color as black as the night, and clasped by a jewel whose glittering flash, he saw even there; a velvet hood of the same color covered the stately head; and the mask--the tiresome, inevitable mask covered the beautiful--he was positive it was beautiful--face.

He had seen her a score of times in that very dress, flitting like a dark, graceful ghost through the city streets, and the sight sent his heart plunging against his side like an inward sledge-hammer.

Would one pulse in her heart stir ever so faintly at sight of him?
Just as he asked himself the question, and was stepping forward to meet her, feeling very like the country swain in love--"hot and dry like, with a pain in his side like"-- he suddenly stopped.