With this I told her all,--all, from my first hour of meeting her at the railway station, to my last parting with her at Schaffhausen. I tried to make my narrative as grave and commonplace as might be, but, do what I would, the figure in which I was forced to present myself, overcame all her attempts at seriousness, and she laughed immoderately. If it had not been for this burst of merriment on her part, it is more than probable I might have brought down my history to the very moment of telling, and narrated every detail of my journey with Vaterchen and Tintefieck. I was, however, warned by these circumstances, and concluded in time to save myself from this new ridicule. “From all that you have told me here,” said she, “I only see one thing,--which is, that you are deeply in love with this young lady.” “No,” said I; “I was so once, I am not so any longer. My passion has fallen into the chronic stage, and I feel myself her friend,--only her friend.” “Well, for the purpose I have in mind, this is all the better I want you, as I said, to place my letter in her hands, and, so far as possible, enforce its arguments,--that is, try and persuade her that to reject our offers on her behalf is to throw upon us a share of the great wrong our uncle worked, and make us, as it were, participators in the evil he did them. As for myself,” said she, boldly, “all the happiness that I might have derived from ample means is dashed with remembering what misery it has been attended with to that poor family. If you urge that one theme forcibly, you can scarcely fail with her.” “And what are your intentions with regard to her?” asked I. “They will take any shape she pleases. My brother would either enable her to return home, and, by persuading her mother to accept an annuity, live happily under her own roof; or she might, if the spirit of independence fires her,--she might yet use her influence over her mother and sister to regard our proposals more favorably; or she might come and live with us, and this I would prefer to all; but you must read my letter, and more than once too. You must possess yourself of all its details, and, if there be anything to which you object, there will be time enough still to change it.” “Here he is,--here is the portrait of our lost sheep,” said Crofton, now entering with a miniature in his hand. It represented a bluff, bold, almost insolently bold man in full civic robes, the face not improbably catching an additional expression of vulgar pride from the fact that the likeness was taken in that culminating hour of greatness when he first took the chair as chief magistrate of his town. “Not an over-pleasant sort of fellow to deal with, I should say,” remarked Crofton. “There are some stern lines here about the corners of the eyes, and certain very suspicious-looking indentations next the mouth.” “His eye has no forgiveness in it,” said his sister.