ngry and wild with the unlucky face that looked back
at me, that I should have scratched my eyes out if only my nails and my
courage had had strength for it.

"'Meanwhile the tailor's wife had often advised me to make a
maintenance by sitting as a model. A relation of hers lived that way,
who was no real beauty, but only well-grown. Looks were a gift of God
like everything else, and if a singer hired out her beautiful voice for
gold, why should not I let the same face that had brought me into
trouble help me out of it again? But to all such propositions I always
returned the same answer; I knew that nothing could be so bitter to my
lover as to hear that I had let myself be looked at for money like a
show at a fair, and had gone to serve as lay figure first to one and
then to another. That I knew he would never forgive. "_He_ forgive,
indeed," said the woman, "he ought to think himself very happy if you
forgive him for having taken himself off, and never making a sign
since." However, I remained quite resolute, till at length I was at the
last gasp, and did not know how I was to pay my next month's lodgings.
If Herr van Kuylen had not come forward--whom I could trust to have no
bad intentions--God knows I have many a time walked through the English
garden, and thought if I took a cold bath there, it would be the best
and quickest way of escape!

"'And now forgive me for telling you such a long story from beginning
to end. But you have done me a real kindness by listening without
laughing or shaking your heads. For most people will not believe that
one can be unhappy except through his own fault, and least of all
unhappy through what is considered the greatest good fortune. Babette,'
said she to the child, who just then brought in her wreath, 'take up
your knitting and put the book back in its place. We must go, it has
struck five, and your mother will be waiting.'

"Van Kuylen jumped up as if some one had shaken him out of sleep.

"'Will you come to-morrow at the same time, Miss Kate?' said he,
without looking at her.

"'To-morrow my landlady goes to a wedding,' she replied, tying on a
little black bonnet that framed her face most exquisitely. 'I must
stay at home with the children, but the day after to-morrow if it suits
you--'

"He silently bowed, and prepared to help her on with her dark woollen
shawl, which, however, she declined. She muffled herself up so
completely in it that her slender form was hardly appa