“I believe so, mother.”

The superior rose, took a register from a shelf, appeared to be looking into it attentively for some time, and then said, as she replaced it:  “Fetch in this young girl, and go and wait for me in the press-room.”

“Deformed—­intelligent—­clever at her needle,” said the superior, reflecting; “she will excite no suspicion.  We must see.”

In about a minute, Florine returned with Mother Bunch, whom she introduced to the superior, and then discreetly withdrew.  The young sempstress was agitated, trembling, and much troubled, for she could, as it were, hardly believe a discovery which she had chanced to make during Florine’s absence.  It was not without a vague sense of terror that the hunchback remained alone with the lady superior.

CHAPTER VII.

The temptation.

This was the cause of Mother Bunch’s emotion.  Florine, when she went to see the superior, had left the young sempstress in a passage supplied with benches, and forming a sort of ante-chamber on the first story.  Being alone, the girl had mechanically approached a window which looked upon the convent garden, shut in by a half demolished wall, and terminating at one end in an open paling.  This wall was connected with a chapel that was still building, and bordered on the garden of a neighboring house.  The sewing-girl, at one of the windows on the ground floor of this house—­a grated window, still more remarkable by the sort of tent-like awning above it—­beheld a young female, with her eyes fixed upon the convent, making signs with her hand, at once encouraging and affectionate.  From the window where she stood, Mother Bunch could not see to whom these signs were addressed; but she admired the rare beauty of the telegrapher, the brilliancy of her complexion, the shining blackness of her large eyes, the sweet and benevolent smile which lingered on her lips.  There was, no doubt, some answer to her graceful and expressive pantomime, for, by a movement full of elegance, the girl laid her left hand on her bosom, and waved her right, which seemed to indicate that her heart flew towards the place on which she kept her eyes.  One faint sunbeam, piercing the clouds, came at this moment to play with the tresses of the pale countenance, which, now held close to the bars of the window, was suddenly, as it were, illuminated by the dazzling reflection of her splendid golden hair.  At sight of that charming face, set in its admirable frame of red curls, Mother Bunch started involuntarily; the thought of Mdlle. de Cardoville crossed her mind, and she felt persuaded (nor was she, indeed, mistaken), that the protectress of Agricola was before her.  On thus beholding, in that gloomy asylum, this young lady, so marvellously beautiful, and remembering the delicate kindness with which a few days before she had received Agricola in her luxurious little palace of dazzling