as going to the ball-room. "Maybe I can discover what 'Sieur de la Rue
is planning against Monsieur over the way," she said, knowing certainly
the slap would not be forgiven; and the daughter, though tremblingly, at
once withdrew her objections.

The heavy young Dutchman, now thoroughly electrified, was writing like
mad. He wrote and tore up, wrote and tore up, lighted his lamp, started
again, and at last signed his name. A letter by a Dutchman in
French!--what can be made of it in English? We will see:

"MADAME AND MADEMOISELLE:

"A stranger, seeking not to be acquainted, but seeing and admiring all
days the goodness and high honor, begs to be pardoned of them for the
mistakes, alas! of yesterday, and to make reparation and satisfaction in
destroying the ornaments of the window, as well as the loss of
compensation from Monsieur the manager, with the enclosed bill of the
_Banque de la Louisiane_ for fifty dollars ($50). And, hoping they will
seeing what he is meaning, remains, respectfully,

"KRISTIAN KOPPIG.

"P.S.--Madame must not go to the ball."

He must bear the missive himself. He must speak in French. What should
the words be? A moment of study--he has it, and is off down the long
three-story stairway. At the same moment Madame John stepped from the
wicket, and glided off to the _Salle de Conde_, a trifle late.

"I shall see Madame John, of course," thought the young man, crushing a
hope, and rattled the knocker. 'Tite Poulette sprang up from praying for
her mother's safety. "What has she forgotten?" she asked herself, and
hastened down. The wicket opened. The two innocents were stunned.

"Aw--aw"--said the pretty Dutchman, "aw,"--blurted out something in
virgin Dutch, ... handed her the letter, and hurried down street.

"Alas! what have I done?" said the poor girl, bending over her candle,
and bursting into tears that fell on the unopened letter. "And what
shall I do! It may be wrong to open it--and worse not to." Like her sex,
she took the benefit of the doubt, and intensified her perplexity and
misery by reading and misconstruing the all but unintelligible contents.
What then? Not only sobs and sighs, but moaning and beating of little
fists together, and outcries of soul-felt agony stifled against the
bedside, and temples pressed into knitted palms, because of one who
"sought _not to be_ acquainted," but offered money--money!--in pity to a
poor--shame on her for saying that!--a poor _nigresse_.

And