a girl of fifteen who wants to be amused; and so she only laughed at
John.

He tried to amuse her, but he tried too seriously. He wrote a story to
read her, "Leoni, a Legend of Italy," for of course she understood
enough English to be read to, no doubt to be wooed in, seeing her mother
was English. The story was of brigands and true lovers, the thing that
was popular in the romantic period. The costumery and mannerisms of the
little romance are out of date now, and seem ridiculous, though Mr.
Pringle and the public were pleased with it then, when it was printed in
"Friendship's Offering." But the girl of fifteen only laughed the more.

When they left, he had no interest in his tour-book; even the mountains,
for the time, had lost their power, and all his plans of great works
were dropped for a new style of verse--the love-poems of 1836.

His father, from whom he kept nothing, approved the verses, and did not
disapprove his views on the young lady. Indeed, it is quite plain, from
the correspondence of the two gentlemen, that Mr. Domecq intended his
friend and partner's son to become his own son-in-law. He had the
greatest respect for the Ruskins, and every reason for desiring to link
their fortunes still more closely with those of his own family. But to
Mrs. Ruskin, with her religious feelings, it was intolerable,
unbelievable, that the son whom she had brought up in the nurture and
admonition of the strictest Protestantism should fix his heart on an
alien in race and creed. The wonder is that their relations were not
more strained; there are few young men who would have kept unbroken
allegiance to a mother whose sympathy failed them at such a crisis.

As the year went on his passion seemed to grow in the absence of the