Lo! when I reached the garret-door, all within was dark as a pit: the light was out. Happily some one⁠—Madame, I think, with her usual calm sense⁠—had brought a lamp from the room; speedily, therefore, as they came up, a ray pierced the opaque blackness. There stood the bougie quenched on the drawers; but where was the letter? And I looked for that now, and not for the nun.

“My letter! my letter!” I panted and plained, almost beside myself. I groped on the floor, wringing my hands wildly. Cruel, cruel doom! To have my bit of comfort preternaturally snatched from me, ere I had well tasted its virtue!

I don’t know what the others were doing; I could not watch them; they asked me questions I did not answer; they ransacked all corners; they prattled about this and that disarrangement of cloaks, a breach or crack in the skylight⁠—I know not what. “Something or somebody has been here,” was sagely averred.