ting quietly
over my work about noon, when in ran my little Christopher, and called
out to me that I was to come instantly to mamma, that there was a most
beautiful lady there with a gentleman, and that they had asked for me.
There they were then, husband and wife, on their marriage trip through
Italy to New York. On the day I had last seen them they had set out
homewards to present themselves to their parents, and as Hans Lutz--his
real name was Johann Ludwig Weinmann--was making a quantity of money
over there in America, it was probably much the same to the father of
the fair Kate, whether the result was attained by railway-making and
bridge-building, or the tanning of leather. My good wife had at
first--she afterwards confessed to me--sat rather monosyllabically
there, but when I came in, and neither the young woman nor I blushed,
nor exchanged any sign whatever of a private understanding, she finally
resumed her equipoise, and was obliged to believe in me: more--in the
course of the next half-hour she fell so completely in love with the
beautiful world's wonder, she did not know how to let her go, and
finally parted from her with the tenderest embraces. Later she said to
me, 'It really is a very good thing she is gone to America.'

"The same evening brought another leave-taking, but only in the form of
a letter. My good mynheer sent me a note, in which he after his own
fashion, and with divers humorous marginal illustrations, announced his
journey to Italy. He enclosed a small pen-and-ink drawing as a
keepsake; which was very highly finished and in all respects a genuine
Van Kuylen. Before a hut in a primeval forest sat a young pair under
the shade of palms, bananas, and bread-fruit trees, a couple of fine
children playing about their feet, the wife occupied with needle-work,
the husband reading to her. Above them on the branch of a majestic tree
squatted a small thin ape who was just about to throw a date into the
beautiful young woman's lap. Whom the faces of the wedded pair
resembled, and who had sat to the artist for the odd, pinched, resigned
countenance of the ape it were needless to particularise."

END OF THE FAIR KATE.

GEOFFROY AND GARCINDE.

GEOFFROY AND GARCINDE.

About the time of the second crusade, there lived near Carcassonne in
Provence, a nobleman, Count Hugo of Malaspina, who after the death of