it by, but a Youth of the Town, with Hope in his heart, leaned over the
guard-rail and looked upon the beauty of that pictured face long and
earnestly.

It was the head of a pretty girl with dark hair and dark eyes. She was
clad in a dainty white gown, loose-flowing and beautiful. In her left
hand, slender and uplifted, a letter; in her right a pen, and beneath it
a spotless page.

She was seated within the shadow of a white marble chimney-piece richly
carved with Cupids, fluttering, kneeling, supplicating; with arrows new,
broken, and mended; with quivers full, depleted, and empty. The great,
broad shelf above her pretty head was laden with rare and artistic
treasures. A vase from India; a costly fan from China; a dark and
mottled bit of color in an ancient frame of tarnished gold, done by some
Flemish master of the long-ago. Beyond all this, a ground of shadowy
green, pale, cool, and delicious. On the table, near the spotless page
and the dear pen-clasping hand, a bunch of flowers; not a mass of ugly
blooms, opulent and oppressive, but a few garden roses, old-fashioned
and exceeding sweet, blushing to their utmost red, having found
themselves so unexpectedly brought into the presence of this pretty
girl.

This, in outline, was the picture. The dealer had written on a slip of
paper, in large, rude letters,

_Her answer: Yes, or No._

It was a frameless crayon, thrust aside and somewhat overshadowed by a
huge and garish thing in gaudy-flowered gilt, which easily caught and