one out of doors. And yet I had never exchanged ten
words with her.

"And now, when I found her again, a year older and suddenly developed
into a young woman--no, Hans, you need not fear that I am shamelessly
going to put our whole love-story at your mercy, here in the bright
morning sunlight. Enough to say that it had fared much the same with
her, as far as my worthy self was concerned, as with me in respect to
her. We saw that we were meant for one another, as people say--without
ever thinking how much is meant by the words.

"Well! everything would have been well enough; the match seemed as
_bien assortie_ as could possibly have been wished even in such an
aristocratic and cosmopolitan capital as ours. If we had only
married at once, on the spur of the moment, we should have been just
the people--she with her seventeen years, and I with my three or
four-and-twenty--to be altogether suited to one another, and, as time
went on, to so round off the very perceptible and serious corners and
sharpnesses of our two temperaments, that finally it would have been a
thoroughly happy marriage. But, unfortunately, Irene's mother had
married at seventeen, and attributed her lifelong invalidism--for she
was a delicate creature and always remained so--to this early marriage.
When she died--still very young--she charged her husband solemnly that
he should not let their only daughter marry before she was twenty; and
the uncle, who afterward filled a father's place to my sweetheart,
considered himself absolutely bound by this inherited pledge. I must
wait patiently, therefore, for three whole years. And as he was a
bachelor, and his niece had no chaperon to call upon but a former
servant, I was required to pledge myself to avoid all companionship
with my betrothed during this long probation, and only to carry on my
courtship by letter; so that every temptation to seek to shorten the
time of waiting might be put a stop to once for all.

"You can imagine what my feelings were when the old gentleman told me
all this. To decree a three years' banishment just because we should
give him trouble--because he hated responsibility, and because he
believed, as an old hand at love-making, that this was the best way to
protect lovers against themselves! But, jovial as his manner was, he
was an uncompromising egotist where his own quiet and comfort were
concerned. And I was too stubborn and too proud to make any
supplications, and too sure of mys