rooms, with white wainscots, ornamented with thin-legged mahogany
furniture, and, on the walls, with old-fashioned engravings, chiefly of
scriptural subjects, hung very high. This agreeable sense of solitude,
of having the house to herself, of which I have spoken, always excited
Gertrude's imagination; she could not have told you why, and neither can
her humble historian. It always seemed to her that she must do something
particular--that she must honor the occasion; and while she roamed
about, wondering what she could do, the occasion usually came to an end.
To-day she wondered more than ever. At last she took down a book; there
was no library in the house, but there were books in all the rooms. None
of them were forbidden books, and Gertrude had not stopped at home for
the sake of a chance to climb to the inaccessible shelves. She possessed
herself of a very obvious volume--one of the series of the Arabian
Nights--and she brought it out into the portico and sat down with it in
her lap. There, for a quarter of an hour, she read the history of the
loves of the Prince Camaralzaman and the Princess Badoura. At last,
looking up, she beheld, as it seemed to her, the Prince Camaralzaman
standing before her. A beautiful young man was making her a very low
bow--a magnificent bow, such as she had never seen before. He appeared
to have dropped from the clouds; he was wonderfully handsome; he
smiled--smiled as if he were smiling on purpose. Extreme surprise, for a
moment, kept Gertrude sitting still; then she rose, without even keeping
her finger in her book. The young man, with his hat in his hand, still
looked at her, smiling and smiling. It was very strange.

"Will you kindly tell me," said the mysterious visitor, at last,
"whether I have the honor of speaking to Miss Went-worth?"

"My name is Gertrude Wentworth," murmured the young woman.