"'Honestly, I think _you_ the most beautiful girl I ever saw!' "'Oh, that's _nonsense_, Mr. Josselin, although I ought to have known you would say that! I'm not fit to tie her shoes. What I mean is--a--a--oh! forgive me--are you very _fond_ of her, as I'm sure she deserves, you know?' "'Oh yes, Miss Royce, very fond of her indeed; she's poor, she's of no family, she's Miss Nobody of Nowhere, you know; she's all that I am, except that she has a right to her honest father's name--' "'Does she _know_ you're very fond of her?' "'No; but I hope to tell her so some day.' "Then we were silent, and I felt very red, and very much inclined to cry, but I managed to keep in my tears. "Then I got up, and so did he--and he made some joke about Grissel and the loch-bottle; and we both laughed quite naturally and looked at the pictures, and he told me he was going back to London with the Gibsons that very week, and thanked me warmly for my kind interest in him, and assured me he thoroughly deserved it--and talked so funnily and so nicely that I quite forgave myself. I really don't think he guessed for one moment what I had been driving at all the while; I got back all my self-respect; I felt so grateful to him that I was fonder of him than ever, though no longer so idiotically in love. He was not for me. He had somehow laughed me into love with him, and laughed me out of it. "Then I bade him good-bye, and squeezed his hand with all my heart, and told him how much I should like some day to meet Miss Gibson and be her friend if she would let me. "Then I went back to Riffrath and took mamma her loch; but she no longer wanted it, for I told her I had changed my mind about Freddy, and that cured her like magic; and she kissed me on both cheeks and called me her dear, darling, divine Julia. Poor, sweet mamma! "I had given her many a bad quarter of an hour, but this good moment made up for them all. "She was eighty-two last birthday, and can still read Josselin's works in the cheap edition without spectacles--thanks, no doubt, to the famous Doctor Hasenclever! She reads nothing else! "Et voilà comment ça s'est passé. "It's I that'll be the proud woman when I read this letter, printed, in your life of Josselin. "Yours sincerely, "Julia Ironsides. "P. S.--I've actually just told mamma--and I'm still her dear, darling, divine Julia!" * * * * * Charming as were Barty's remembrances of Düsseldorf, the most charming of all was his remembrance of going aboard the little steamboat bound for Rotterdam, one night at the end of May, with old Mrs. Bletchley, Mrs. Gibson and her daughter, and my sister Ida.