around his plate, enjoining upon him in the most approved fashion of Dutch hospitality—to eat!
Nor did Harry always find himself sufficiently refreshed to start for home as soon as the evening meal was finished. From the table to the long covered stoop was a natural and easy transition, for there the air was fresh and cool; and while Baltus planted himself, puffing, in his favorite corner, and his silent vrow sat knitting and musing at his side, and pussy, unreproved, now dandled the good dame's ball of yarn in her paws, and now, tapping it fiercely, pursued it rolling far across the floor; while the swallows darted daringly inside the pillars, and skimming close to the ceiling, flew chirping out at the farthest opening, Harry and Getty chatted and laughed together, talking only on common themes, it is true, yet at times in tones which might have been mistaken, by one who had not caught the words, for tones of love.
And there was a time, when yet Harry's father was alive, and was a man of wealth, that the young man dreamed of love. It was presumptuous, he know, in him, even then, to look up to one so fair and pure as sweet Gertrude seemed to him, and one for whom so many worthier than himself would be certain to aspire. Yet he could not refrain from hoping, though with so faint a heart that he never found courage to declare, or even most remotely to hint at, the love which consumed him. But if, while he was the prospective heir of great wealth, he felt thus unworthy of the object of his admiration, how widely, hopelessly yawned the gulf of separation between them when positive poverty became his lot! With a pang of unspeakable intensity, he dismissed the bright vision which had gilded his heart, and sought no more to recall so painful and illusive a dream.
Yet, strangely enough, while he held himself thus unworthy of Gertrude, and considered that his changed position precluded him from the right to offer her his hand, he saw no such obstacles in the way of his brilliant cousin Tom, now about to enter, with a victor's stride, upon that field which he had so ingloriously relinquished.
A very young lawyer was Tom; decidedly handsome, and possessing a moderate amount of talent, flanked by a most immoderate and inordinate vanity. But in Harry's estimation, his merits were
