on her head when the door opened, and who should enter
but--Kalman Sos!

Julia, who was standing before the mirror and saw him enter, had just
time to check the start of astonishment which his appearance caused,
and, turning calmly round, "O you bad man!" she exclaimed in a voice
of gentle reproach, "to have put me to such an unmerciful trial. If I
had not known you so well, I might have been quite desperate on your
account."

"Then you never doubted me?"

"Doubted you! how could I imagine that you would forsake me, when
everybody knew we were going to be married! I must have had a very low
opinion of you indeed, had I thought for an instant that you could
have so basely betrayed a woman who loved you. Oh, no! I knew it was
only a poetical caprice on your part to prove the strength of my
confidence. I knew you would return, and so I did not even put off my
guests, but made all the preparations for the day appointed, so well
did I read your character."

"Yes, Julia! you read truly," murmured Kalman, enchanted; "it was only
a trial, which you have overcome, and my love will now be a thousand
times stronger than ever."

Julia turned from her mirror, and, courtesying low, with a smile of
bewitching coquetry, asked, "Am I pretty?"

"Oh, lovely!--Oh, angelic!" murmured the poet, throwing himself at
Julia's feet.

At that instant Uncle Nanasy entered to announce that the reverend
gentleman had arrived for the ceremony.

Julia poured some _Ess bouquet_ on her handkerchief, and, taking
Nanasy's arm, who stepped forward _a pas de menuet_, she descended to
the apartment where the guests were assembled.

The company hastened to greet the lovely bride, each according to his
own mode, and one and all seemed lost in admiration of her beauty.

At last the reverend gentleman stepped forward, and, rubbing his hands
with a business-like countenance, asked the name of the "happy
bridegroom."

Julia looked round with one of her sweetest smiles, while Kalman
hastened across all the corns in the company in his haste to join the
beautiful bride; but Julia's hand had already been placed in that of
nephew Sandor, whom she presented to the clergyman as her future
husband!

Kalman tottered towards the wall, and so completely lost his presence
of mind, that he tripped successively over three chairs into the lap
of a fat dowager lady; and then, starting up, rushed to the nearest
door, but finding it was a cupboard had to return acro