Barty's courtship didn't last long--only five or six months--during which he made lots of money by sketching little full-length portraits of people in outline and filling up with tints in water-color. He thus immortalized my father and mother, and Ida Scatcherd and her husband, and the old Scatcherds, and lots of other people. It was not high art, I suppose; he was not a high artist; but it paid well, and made him more tolerant of trade than ever. He took the upper part of a house in Southampton Row, and furnished it almost entirely with wedding-gifts; among other things, a beautiful semi-grand piano by Érard--the gift of my father. Everything was charming there and in the best taste. Leah was better at furnishing a house than at drawing and music-making; it was an occupation she revelled in. It is not perhaps for me to say that their cellar might hold its own with that of any beginners in their rank of life! Well, and so they were married at Marylebone Church, and I was Barty's best man (he was to have been mine, and for that very bride). Nobody else was there but the family, and Ida, whose husband was abroad; the sun shone, though it was not yet May--and then we breakfasted; and John Gilpin made a very funny speech, though with tears in his voice; and as for poor Maman-belle-mère, as Barty called her, she was a very Niobe. They went for a fortnight to Boulogne. I wished them joy from the bottom of my heart, and flung a charming little white satin slipper of Mrs. Gibson's; it alighted on the carriage--_our_ carriage, by-the-way; we had just started one, and now lived at Lancaster Gate. It was a sharp pang--almost unbearable, but, also, almost the last. The last was when she came back and I saw how radiant she looked. And as for Barty, he was like "the herald Mercury, New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill!" and he had shaved off his beard and mustache to please his wife. * * * * * "From George du Maurier, Esqre., A.R.W.S., Hampstead Heath, to the Right Honble. Sir Robert Maurice, Bart., M.P.: "My Dear Maurice,--In answer to your kind letter, I shall be proud and happy to illustrate your biography of Barty Josselin; but as for editing it, _vous plaisantez, mon ami; un amateur comme moi!_ who'll edit the editor? _Quis custodiet?_... "You're mistaken about Malines. I only got back there a week or two before he left it. I remember often seeing him there, arm in arm with his aunt, Lady Caroline Grey, and being told that he was a _monsieur anglais, qui avait mal aux yeux_ (like me); but in Düsseldorf, during the following winter, I knew him very well indeed.