This was an epistle to startle an editor as coming from a young lady; but yet there was something in it that seemed to imply strength. Before answering it Mr. Brown did a thing which he must be presumed to have done as man and not as editor. He walked off to King-Charles Street in Camden Town, and looked at the house. It was a nice little street, very quiet, quite genteel, completely made up with what we vaguely call gentlemen’s houses, with two windows to each drawing-room, and with a balcony to some of them, the prettiest balcony in the street belonging to No. 19, near the park, and equally removed from poverty and splendour. Brown walked down the street, on the opposite side, towards the park, and looked up at the house. He intended to walk at once homewards, across the park, to his own little home in St. John’s Wood Road; but when he had passed half a street away from the Puffle residence, he turned to have another look, and retraced his steps. As he passed the door it was opened, and there appeared upon the steps,--one of the prettiest little women he had ever seen in his life. She was dressed for walking, with that jaunty, broad, open bonnet which women then wore, and seemed, as some women do seem, to be an amalgam of softness, prettiness, archness, fun, and tenderness,--and she carried a tiny blue parasol. She was fair, gray-eyed, dimpled, all alive, and dressed so nicely and yet simply, that Mr. Brown was carried away for the moment by a feeling that he would like to publish her novel, let it be what it might. And he heard her speak. “Charles,” she said, “you sha’n’t smoke.” Our editor could, of course, only pass on, and had not an opportunity of even seeing Charles. At the corner of the street he turned round and saw them walking the other way. Josephine was leaning on Charles’s arm. She had, however, distinctly avowed herself to be a young lady,--in other words, an unmarried woman. There was, no doubt, a mystery, and Mr. Brown felt it to be incumbent on him to fathom it. His next letter was as follows:-- “MY DEAR MISS DE MONTMORENCI, “I am sorry that you should hate me and my compliments. I had intended to be as civil and as nice as possible. I am quite in earnest, and you had better send the MS. As to all the questions you ask, I cannot answer them to any purpose till I have read the story,--which I will promise to do without subjecting it to the pigeon-holes. If you do not like Friday, you shall come on Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday, or Saturday, or even on Sunday, if you wish it;--and at any hour, only let it be fixed. “Yours faithfully, “JONATHAN BROWN.” “Friday.”