She came down the graveled walk to meet me, on this beautiful midsummer night--came to me in pure white, her golden hair in splendid disorder--strangely beautiful, yet in tears! She told me her fresh grievances. The Marquis, always a despot, had latterly misused her most vilely. That very morning, at breakfast, he had cursed the fishballs and sneered at the pickled onions. She is a good cook. The neighbors will tell you so. And to be told by the base Marquis--a man who, previous to his marriage, had lived at the cheap eating-houses--to be told by him that her manner of frying fishballs was a failure--it was too much. Her tears fell fast. I too wept. I mixed my sobs with her'n. "Fly with me!" I cried. Her lips met mine. I held her in my arms. I felt her breath upon my cheek! It was Hunkey. "Fly with me. To New York! I will write romances for the Sunday papers--real French romances, with morals to them. My style will be appreciated. Shop girls and young mercantile persons will adore it, and I will amass wealth with my ready pen." Ere she could reply--ere she could articulate her ecstasy, her husband, the Marquis, crept snake-like upon me. Shall I write it? He kicked me out of the garden--he kicked me into the street. I did not return. How could I? I, so ethereal, so full of soul, of sentiment, of sparkling originality! He, so gross, so practical, so lop-eared! Had I returned, the creature would have kicked me again. So I left Paris for this place--this place, so lonely, so dismal. Ah me! Oh dear! 3.3. A ROMANCE.--WILLIAM BARKER, THE YOUNG PATRIOT. I. "No, William Barker, you cannot have my daughter's hand in marriage until you are her equal in wealth and social position." The speaker was a haughty old man of some sixty years, and the person whom he addressed was a fine-looking young man of twenty-five. With a sad aspect the young man withdrew from the stately mansion. II. Six months later the young man stood in the presence of the haughty old man. "What! YOU here again?" angrily cried the old man. "Ay, old man," proudly exclaimed William Barker. "I am here, your daughter's equal and yours?" The old man's lips curled with scorn. A derisive smile lit up his cold features; when, casting violently upon the marble center table an enormous roll of greenbacks, William Barker cried-- "See! Look on this wealth. And I've tenfold more! Listen, old man! You spurned me from your door. But I did not despair. I secured a contract for furnishing the Army of the -- with beef--" "Yes, yes!" eagerly exclaimed the old man. "--and I bought up all the disabled cavalry horses I could find--" "I see! I see!" cried the old man. "And good beef they make, too." "They do! they do! and the profits are immense." "I should say so!" "And now, sir, I claim your daughter's fair hand!"