would have been nothing so very out of the
way either. Instead, therefore, of treating the matter so tragically,
you ought rather to thank God for having brought things so happily
round; to be reconciled to your lover; to my poor friend, who after all
is the one to be pitied, for he goes empty away; and to your own face
with which you were so very angry. It has, indeed, been an infliction
to you, but at last it is to it that you are indebted for the happiness
of having Mr. Hans Lutz again. For if Mrs. Bathsheba had not stolen
your bewitching profile, who knows whether your lover would ever have
come on your track here in Munich, and finally carried off picture and
original both!'

"Such was the gist of my address, and my eloquence had the happiest
results. There ensued a most affecting reconciliation, an embracing,
kissing, and handshaking, whereof--as regards the last at all events--I
had my due share, and in another five minutes I saw the happy pair
drive off in the cab, radiant with delirious bliss, and had scarcely
time to invite them to pay a visit to my house, and to call after the
driver to go through the English garden, that being the best scene for
such an idyll.

"Van Kuylen did not show himself again. But as I slowly followed the
cab, and turned round once more, I thought I saw from the upper window
of the small house, a resigned cloud of smoke eddy up from a white
clay-pipe. He had not spared himself the pain of looking after the
lovers from his lonely watch-tower.

"I need not say that I instantly went home, and accurately repeated the
whole remarkable story to my dear wife. Alas! I failed to produce the
desired effect thereby. There lurked in the soul of that excellent
woman a prejudice against a girl who presumed to be so beautiful that
all men ran after her, and even the steadiest landscape painters took
in her an interest--fatherly, indeed, but dangerously warm. The
suspicion that all might not have been so very right after all, seemed
to gain confirmation, when day after day passed without bringing the
happy pair to pay their promised visit. My wife went about again with a
well-known air of magnanimously suppressed triumph, and treated me with
such compassionate indulgence, that it almost drove me wild. But what
was to be done? I must needs put up with it, and had only the choice of
passing as a bad judge of character, or a secret sinner.

"However, in a fortnight's time the tide turned. I was sit