good looks is, as we all know, deliberately to court failure; far
better request every man to conjure up his own type of beauty and he
will be sure to be interested in the picture he evolves. That man will
be nearest the truth whose young lady has a rich crop of brown curly
hair, very blue inquisitive eyes, and a figure of peculiar elasticity.

Octavie L., dite Carry, was the daughter of an organist who had held
a good position at one of the principal churches of Malines. When he
died he left but a small inheritance to his widow; with what she could
realise, she purchased the goodwill of a small tobacconist's store
and set up in business. Neither the mother nor the daughter had much
previous knowledge of the concern they had started, and they were
consequently not very discriminating in the selection of their brands;
but what was lacking in connoisseurship was fully made up for by
Mrs. L.'s obliging manners and by Octavie's blue eyes. These had
been steadily gaining in expression since she first opened them
about seventeen years back. Customers soon came in, and for a time
the little business was as flourishing as anything could well be in
Malines. The average citizen of so ecclesiastically conservative, and
hereditarily stationary a city could hardly be expected to encourage
a new venture of the kind. Still even there there were some young men
about town, a sort of "jeunesse doré", not of 18-carat gold perhaps,
but a "jeunesse" quite equal to the pleasant task of buzzing around
the fair tobacconist. Mrs. L. did her share of chaperoning; du Maurier
and I supplied the rest, and watched over her with chivalrous, if not
quite disinterested devotion. We differed in every respect from the
type of the young man of the period above mentioned; so naturally we
were bright stars in Carry's firmament; she looked upon us as superior
beings, and, granting her points of comparison, not without cause;
du Maurier could draw and I could paint; he could sing and I could