In due time this answer came: 

     “HEIDELBERG, August 27, 1871.

“MISS ST. CLAIR:  Your somewhat singular letter of August 5th was duly received.  If I believed that you had written it, or ever could or would do anything, with proper deliberation, I should accept your decision at once.  But as I have good reason to know your habit of acting from sudden impulses which you afterward regret, I give you three months to reconsider this hasty step.

     “I have the honor to be your obedient servant,

     “F.  A. DENHAM.”

Helen held to me the open sheet, with kindling eyes and glowing cheeks:  “Three months!  I don’t need three minutes:  I wouldn’t change in three centuries.  I am so glad to be free!” she cried, sobbing and laughing at the same moment.  “He has worried me so—­a poor little thing like me!”

The next morning I started on my return to Boston.

Early in October a servant handed me a card bearing the name Francisco Alvala.  I had ceased to think of the boy, not having heard a word from him; but here he was, looking very manly, browned with the sun and sea, and beautiful as Endymion when Diana stooped to kiss him and all the green leaves in the white moonshine were tremulous with sympathy.

After the first greeting he asked, “How is Miss St. Clair? and when did you see her last?”

I told him of my recent visit.

“She is not married, then?”

“On the contrary, she is free.  The engagement with Mr. Denham has been broken.”

“What did I tell you?  Did I not say it would be I?” in a burst of triumph.

As a good Boston woman I am chagrined to record that Bunker Hill and all the local lions, which I was at some pains to impress on his memory, did not prove so attractive as the earliest Western train.

Why make a long story of what every one foresees?  In the course of the autumn and winter the count made flying visits to Washington, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and even San Francisco, but it was noticeable that the way to all these places lay through Detroit.  He spoke English marvelously well now, and so won upon the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair that on the 23d of April, being his twenty-first birthday, the marriage of the conde de Alvala and Helen St. Clair was duly celebrated.  I could not leave my school to be present at the wedding, but the young couple came to Boston to take leave of me before sailing for Europe.  They were radiant with happiness, and I could hardly tell which I loved best, my boy or my girl; but if the Italian had been there to ask if I ever saw a more beautiful couple, I should have answered no with great emphasis.

I will copy Helen’s first letter in order to prove that a chateau en Espagne is not always a castle in the air: 

     “ALVALA, near Toledo, June 20, 1872.