silver seal had suggested very serious reflections.

"Oh, you want to know too much at once!" said her cousin. "But,
listen, I will let you into a little plot."

"Is your lover in it too?"

"Oh, ho! you want so much to see him! But, as you may suppose, an old
maid like Cousin Betty, who had managed to keep a lover for five
years, keeps him well hidden.--Now, just let me alone. You see, I have
neither cat nor canary, neither dog nor a parrot, and the old Nanny
Goat wanted something to pet and tease--so I treated myself to a
Polish Count."

"Has he a moustache?"

"As long as that," said Lisbeth, holding up her shuttle filled with
gold thread. She always took her lace-work with her, and worked till
dinner was served.

"If you ask too many questions, you will be told nothing," she went
on. "You are but two-and-twenty, and you chatter more than I do though
I am forty-two--not to say forty-three."

"I am listening; I am a wooden image," said Hortense.

"My lover has finished a bronze group ten inches high," Lisbeth went
on. "It represents Samson slaying a lion, and he has kept it buried
till it is so rusty that you might believe it to be as old as Samson
himself. This fine piece is shown at the shop of one of the old