"Julia Ironsides."

Thus time flowed smoothly and pleasantly for Barty all through the
summer. In August the Royces left, and also Captain Reece--they for
Scotland, he for Algiers--and appointed to meet again in Riffrath
next spring.

In October Lady Caroline took her niece to Rome, and Barty was left
behind to his work, very much to her grief and Daphne's.

He wrote to them every Monday, and always got a letter back on the
Saturday following.

Barty spent the winter hard at work, but with lots of play between,
and was happy among his painter fellows--and sketching and
caricaturing, and skating and sleighing with the English who
remained in Duesseldorf, and young von this and young von that. I
have many of his letters describing this genial, easy life--letters
full of droll and charming sketches.

[Illustration: "HE MIGHT HAVE THROWN THE HANDKERCHIEF AS HE
PLEASED"]

He does not mention the fair Julia much, but there is no doubt that the
remembrance of her much preoccupied him, and kept him from losing his
heart to any of the fair damsels, English and German, whom he skated and
danced with, and sketched and sang to.

As a matter of fact, he had never yet lost his heart in his
life--not even to Julia. He never said much about his love-making
with Julia to me. But his aunt did--and I listened between the
words, as I always do. His four or five years' career in London as a
thoroughgoing young rake had given him a very deep insight into
woman's nature--an insight rare at his age, for all his perceptions
were astonishingly acute, and his unconscious faculty of sympathetic
observation and induction and deduction immense.

And, strange to say, if that heart had never been touched, it had
never been corrupted either, and probably for that very reason--that
he had never been in love with these sirens. It is only when true
love fades away at last in the arms of lust that the youthful, manly
heart is wrecked and ruined and befouled.

He made up his mind that art should be his sole mistress
henceforward, and that the devotion of a lifetime would not be price
enough to pay for her favors, if but she would one day be kind. He
had to make up for so much lost time, and had begun his wooing so
late! Then he was so happy with his male friends! Whatever void
remained in him when his work was done for the day could be so
thoroughly filled up by Henley and Bancroft and Armstrong and du
Mau