He was just going out of the chapel full of unquiet meditations, when passing by the confessional, a magdalen curiously painted which hung near it attracted his eyes:  as he was admiring the piece, something fell from above and hit against his arm; he stooped to take it up, and found it a small ivory tablet:  he looked up, but could see the shadow of nothing behind the grate:  imagining it only an accident, and not knowing to whom to return it, he put it in his pocket, but was no sooner out of the chapel than curiosity excited him to see what it contained, which he had no sooner done than in the first leaf he found these words: 

“As I imagine you did not come this long journey without a desire to see me, it would be too ungrateful not to assist your endeavours:—­come a little before vespers, and enquire of the portress for mademoiselle du Pont;—­say you are her brother, and leave the rest to me.”

There was no name subscribed; but the dear characters, tho’ evidently wrote in haste and with a pencil, which made some alteration in the fineness of the strokes, convinced him it came from no other than Charlotta; and never were any hours so tedious to him as those which past between the receiving this appointment, and that of the fulfilling it.

At length the wish’d-for time arrived, and he repaired to the gate, where telling the portress, as he was ordered, that he was the brother of mademoiselle du Pont, he was immediately brought into the parlour, where he had not waited long before a young lady appeared behind the grate:  as he found it was not her he expected, he was a little at a loss, and not without some apprehensions that his imagination had deceived him:  I know not, madame, said he, if chance has not made me mistaken for some happier person:—­I thought to find a sister here.—­No, replied she laughing, Horatio shall find me a sister in my good offices;—­mademoiselle Charlotta will be here immediately;—­she has counterfeited an indisposition to avoid going to vespers, and obtained permission for me to stay with her;—­so that every thing is right, and as soon as the choir is gone into chapel you will see her.  It would be needless to repeat the transports Horatio uttered on this occasion, so I shall only say they were such as convinced mademoiselle du Pont, that her fair friend had not made this condescension to a man ungrateful for, or insensible of the obligation.  He was indeed so lost in them, that he scarce remembered to pay those compliments to the lady for her generous assistance which it merited from him; but she easily forgave any unpoliteness he might be guilty of on that score; and he so well attoned for it after he had given vent to the sudden emotions of his joy, that she looked, upon him as the most accomplished, as well as the most faithful of his sex.  They had entered into some discourse of the rules of the monastry, and how impossible it would have been for him to have gained an interview with mademoiselle Charlotta, but