he light of skies, to which the moon, just risen, added
deeper and fuller radiance. The ladies were in evening dress, but Kenelm
could not distinguish their faces hidden behind the minstrel. He moved
softly across the street, and took his stand behind a buttress in
the low wall of the garden, from which he could have full view of the
balcony, unseen himself. In this watch he had no other object than
that of a vague pleasure. The whole grouping had in it a kind of scenic
romance, and he stopped as one stops before a picture.

He then saw that of the three ladies one was old; another was a
slight girl of the age of twelve or thirteen; the third appeared to be
somewhere about seven or eight and twenty. She was dressed with more
elegance than the others. On her neck, only partially veiled by a thin
scarf, there was the glitter of jewels; and, as she now turned her
full face towards the moon, Kenelm saw that she was very handsome,--a
striking kind of beauty, calculated to fascinate a poet or an
artist,--not unlike Raphael's Fornarina, dark, with warm tints.

Now there appeared at the open window a stout, burly, middle-aged
gentleman, looking every inch of him a family man, a moneyed man, sleek
and prosperous. He was bald, fresh-coloured, and with light whiskers.

"Holloa," he said, in an accent very slightly foreign, and with a loud
clear voice, which Kenelm heard distinctly, "is it not time for you to
come in?"

"Don't be so tiresome, Fritz," said the handsome lady, half petulantly,
half playfully, in the way ladies address the tiresome spouses they lord
it over. "Your friend has been sulking the whole evening, and is only
just beginning to be pleasant as the moon rises."

"The moon has a good effect on poets and other mad folks, I dare say,"
said the bald man, with a good-humoured laugh. "But I can't have my
little niece laid up again just as she is on the mend: Annie, come in."

The girl obeyed reluctantly. The old lady rose too.

"Ah, Mother, you are wise," said the bald man; "and a game at euchre is
safer than poetizing in night air." He wound his arm round the old lady
with a careful fondness, for she moved with some difficulty as if rather
lame. "As for you two sentimentalists and moon-gazers, I give you ten
minutes' time,--not more, mind."

"Tyrant!" said the minstrel.

The balcony now held only two forms,--the minstrel and the handsome
lady. The window was closed, and partially veiled by muslin draperies,