about! I sat up and looked at it. It must have been there all the
time I was eating my tea. I still sat and looked. I felt vaguely
uncomfortable for a moment, then my common sense asserted itself and
told me that Delle Josephine must have been altering it or something
of that kind and had forgotten to take it away. I wondered if she
sat in my room when I was away. I had rather she did not. Just as I
was about to rise and look at it more closely, a tap came at my door.
I rose and admitted Delle Josephine. She took the tea-things away in
her usual placid manner, but came back the next moment as if she had
forgotten something, clearly the hat. With a slight deprecatory
laugh she removed it and went hurriedly down the stair. Whatever had
she been doing with it, I thought, and settled with a sigh of
satisfaction once more to my work, now that the nightmare in red, a
kind of mute scarlet "Raven," was gone from my room. How very quiet
it was. Not a single sleigh passed, no sounds came from the houses
opposite or from next door, the whole world seemed smothered in the
soft thick pillows of snow quietly gathering upon it. After a while,
however, I could distinctly hear the sound of voices downstairs.
Delle Josephine had a visitor, undoubtedly. Was it a man or a woman?
Not a large company I gathered; it seemed like one person besides
herself. I opened my door, it sounded so comfortably in my lonely
bachelor ear to catch in that strange little house anything so
cheerful as the murmur of voices. My curiosity once aroused, did not
stop here. I went outside the door, not exactly to listen, but as
one does sometimes in a lazy yet inquisitive mood, when anything is
going on at all unusual. This was an unusual occurrence. If Delle
Josephine had visitors often, I was not aware of it. Never before
had I noticed the slightest sound proceed from her sitting-room
after dusk. So I waited a bit listening. Yes there was talking going
on, but in French. As I did not understand her _patois_ very clearly,
I thought there would be no harm in overhearing, and further I
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