The next evening,--although the bills had announced her,
at the corner of every street, in red letters of a gigantic size,--
there was no Veiled Lady to be seen! Now, listen to my simple
little tale, and you shall hear the very latest incident in the known
life--(if life it may be called, which seemed to have no more reality
than the candle-light image of one's self which peeps at us outside
of a dark windowpane)--the life of this shadowy phenomenon.
A party of young gentlemen, you are to understand, were enjoying
themselves, one afternoon,--as young gentlemen are sometimes fond of
doing,--over a bottle or two of champagne; and, among other ladies
less mysterious, the subject of the Veiled Lady, as was very natural,
happened to come up before them for discussion. She rose, as it were,
with the sparkling effervescence of their wine, and appeared in a
more airy and fantastic light on account of the medium through which
they saw her. They repeated to one another, between jest and earnest,
all the wild stories that were in vogue; nor, I presume, did they
hesitate to add any small circumstance that the inventive whim of the
moment might suggest, to heighten the marvellousness of their theme.
"But what an audacious report was that," observed one, "which
pretended to assert the identity of this strange creature with a
young lady,"--and here he mentioned her name,--"the daughter of one
of our most distinguished families!"
"Ah, there is more in that story than can well be accounted for,"
remarked another.
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