Important-looking groomsmen;
dainty, fluffy, white-robed maids; stately, satin-robed,
illusion-veiled bride, and happy groom. She leaned forward to
catch a better glimpse of their faces. "Ah!"--
Those near the Virgin's altar who heard a faint sigh and rustle
on the steps glanced curiously as they saw a slight black-robed
figure clutch the railing and lean her head against it. Miss
Sophie had fainted.
"I must have been hungry," she mused over the charcoal fire in
her little room, "I must have been hungry;" and she smiled a wan
smile, and busied herself getting her evening meal of coffee and
bread and ham.
If one were given to pity, the first thought that would rush to
one's lips at sight of Miss Sophie would have been, "Poor little
woman!" She had come among the bareness and sordidness of this
neighbourhood five years ago, robed in crape, and crying with
great sobs that seemed to shake the vitality out of her.
Perfectly silent, too, she was about her former life; but for all
that, Michel, the quartee grocer at the corner, and Madame
Laurent, who kept the rabbe shop opposite, had fixed it all up
between them, of her sad history and past glories. Not that they
knew; but then Michel must invent something when the neighbours
came to him as their fountain-head of wisdom.
One morning little Miss Sophie opened wide her dingy windows to
catch the early freshness of the autumn wind as it whistled
through the yellow-leafed trees.
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