relish in all things for the best, and he found himself breathing sighs under the Countess's darkened windows. He wrote to her asking why in the world she treated him so cruelly, and then she knew that her charm was working. She was careful not to answer his letter, and to have him refused at her gate as inexorably as ever. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and Benvolio, one night after his dismissal, wandered about the moonlit streets till nearly morning, composing the finest verses he had ever produced. The subscribers to the magazine to which he sent them were at least the gainers. But unlike many poets, Benvolio did not on this occasion bury his passion in his poem; or if he did, its ghost was stalking abroad the very next night. He went again to the Countess's gate, and again it was closed in his face. So, after a very moderate amount of hesitation, he bravely (and with a dexterity which surprised him) scaled her garden wall and dropped down in the moonshine, upon her lawn. I don't know whether she was expecting him, but if she had been, the matter could not have been better arranged. She was sitting in a little niche of shrubbery, with no protector but a microscopic lap-dog. She pretended to be scandalized at his audacity, but his audacity carried the hour. "This time certainly," thought the Countess, "he will make his declaration. He didn't jump that wall, at the risk of his neck,
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