, I'll
be bound, isn't half so pretty; now, don't they?"

"Well, they just don't then. They're mine, as I tell you."

"H'm," I continued, a little nonplussed, "but do you really mean there
is no lady staying with you?"

"Certainly," she replied, evidently enjoying my bewilderment.

"Well, then, some lady must have stayed here once," I retorted, with a
sudden inspiration, "and left them behind--"

"You might be a detective after stolen goods," she interrupted.

"I tell you the things are mine; and what I should like to know does a
gentleman want bothering himself about a lady's petticoat! No wonder
you blush," for, in fact, as was easy to foresee, the situation was
becoming a little ridiculous for me.

"Now, look here," I said with an affectation of gravity, "if you'll
tell me how you came by those things, I'll make it worth your while.
They were given to you by a lady who stayed here not so long ago, now,
weren't they?"

"Well, then, they were."

"The lady stayed here with a gentleman?"

"Yes, she did."

"H'm! I thought so," I said. "Yes! that lady, it pains me to say, was
my wife!"

This unblushing statement was not, I could see, without its effect upon
the present owner of the petticoat.

"But she said they were brother and sister," she replied.

"Of course she did," I returned, with a fine assumption of scorn,--"of
course she did. They always do."

"Dear young woman," I continued, when I was able to control my emotion,
"you are happily remote from the sin and wickedness of the town, and I
am sorry to speak of such things in so peaceful a spot--but as a
strange chance has led me here, I must speak, must tell you that all
wives are not so virtuous and faithful as you, I am sure, are. There
are wives who forsake their husbands and--and go off with a handsomer
man, as the poet says; and mine, mine, alas! was one of them. It is
now some months ago that my wife left me in this way, and since then I
have spent every day in searching for her; but never till this moment
have I come upon the least trace of her. Strange, is it not? that
here, in this peaceful out-of-the-way garden, I should come upon her
very petticoat, her very stockings--"

By this my grief had become such that the kind girl put her hand on my
arm. "Don't take on so," she said kindly, and then remembering her
treasured property, and probably fearing a counterclaim on my part to
its possession, "But how can you be sure she was here?