“One morning as I was leaving my lodging I observed a young girl entering the adjoining garden on the left.  It was a warm day in June, and she was lightly gowned in white.  From her shoulders hung a broad straw hat profusely decorated with flowers and wonderfully beribboned in the fashion of the time.  My attention was not long held by the exquisite simplicity of her costume, for no one could look at her face and think of anything earthly.  Do not fear; I shall not profane it by description; it was beautiful exceedingly.  All that I had ever seen or dreamed of loveliness was in that matchless living picture by the hand of the Divine Artist.  So deeply did it move me that, without a thought of the impropriety of the act, I unconsciously bared my head, as a devout Catholic or well-bred Protestant uncovers before an image of the Blessed Virgin.  The maiden showed no displeasure; she merely turned her glorious dark eyes upon me with a look that made me catch my breath, and without other recognition of my act passed into the house.  For a moment I stood motionless, hat in hand, painfully conscious of my rudeness, yet so dominated by the emotion inspired by that vision of incomparable beauty that my penitence was less poignant than it should have been.  Then I went my way, leaving my heart behind.  In the natural course of things I should probably have remained away until nightfall, but by the middle of the afternoon I was back in the little garden, affecting an interest in the few foolish flowers that I had never before observed.  My hope was vain; she did not appear.

“To a night of unrest succeeded a day of expectation and disappointment, but on the day after, as I wandered aimlessly about the neighborhood, I met her.  Of course I did not repeat my folly of uncovering, nor venture by even so much as too long a look to manifest an interest in her; yet my heart was beating audibly.  I trembled and consciously colored as she turned her big black eyes upon me with a look of obvious recognition entirely devoid of boldness or coquetry.

“I will not weary you with particulars; many times afterward I met the maiden, yet never either addressed her or sought to fix her attention.  Nor did I take any action toward making her acquaintance.  Perhaps my forbearance, requiring so supreme an effort of self-denial, will not be entirely clear to you.  That I was heels over head in love is true, but who can overcome his habit of thought, or reconstruct his character?

“I was what some foolish persons are pleased to call, and others, more foolish, are pleased to be called—­an aristocrat; and despite her beauty, her charms and graces, the girl was not of my class.  I had learned her name—­which it is needless to speak—­and something of her family.  She was an orphan, a dependent niece of the impossible elderly fat woman in whose lodging-house she lived.  My income was small and I lacked the talent for marrying; it is perhaps a gift.