She was so delighted that she crossed his
palm without any silver, and told him, ' All
fortunes were written in that hollow.* They
talked a good while, and at last he fetched
her some tea out of the house, and a slice of
bread and butter, and gathered her a few
cherries off a tree of his own. My dear
mamma was rather scared to find he had been
talking to a gypsy : I verily believe she was
afraid of his being stolen ; and she forbade
him to speak to ner again. Herz was as
filial as the old Hebrew law would have it,
and he never did speak to her again ; though
she used to come and lean upon the garden-
gate, and watch him by the hour j coaxing him,
with the strangest gestures, to approach. At
last she was no more seen, and we supposed
the whole horde had left our country-siae.
" It was years before they came again.
But one moonlight night, just after Herz had
returned from Germany, and was about nine-
teen, we were all sitting in our drawing-room,
with the windows open, when somebody beck-
oned to Herz from the lawn. My mother
was working and did not see, my father was
reading at the lamp ; but I saw, and Herz
saw, that the person who beckoned liim had



COUNTERPARTS, OR THE CROSS OF LOVE.
67



also one hand laid upon her mouth : — for it
was a woman, — I could aee so much, even
in the moonlight.
