“So!” thought I to myself; “my little innocent charmer is an embryo aristocrat, eh? Well then, I was a greater fool than I imagined.” And I walked out of the hotel where I had met Farrar, with the very sensible conclusion to drop a subject that promised nothing but disappointment.
But the fates were against me, or the good angels perhaps, and at the next comer I met an old acquaintance, the very opposite of Farrar in character, who with a long love story of his own fired, my imagination to such an extent that in spite of myself I turned down ⸻ Street, and was proceeding to pass her house, when suddenly the thought struck me, “How do I know that this unapproachable daughter of one of our most prominent citizens is one and the same person with my dainty little charmer? Widowers with young daughters are not so rare in this great city that I need consider the question as decided, because by a half superstitious freak of my own I have settled upon this house as the one I was in the other night. My inamorata may be the offspring of a musician for all I know.” And inflamed at the thought of this possibility—I remembered the piano, you see—I gave to the winds all my fine resolutions and only asked how