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272 base insinuations. The old serving-woman sat in a corner, nodding over her distaff, and the two friends held long confabulations over yellow manuscripts in which the commentary, it must be confessed, did not always adhere very closely to the text. Six months elapsed, and Benvolio found an ineffable charm in this mild mixture of sentiment and study. He had never in his life been so long of the same mind; it really seemed as if, as the phrase is, the fold was taken for ever, as if he had done with the world and were ready to live henceforth in the closet. He hardly thought of the Countess, and they had no correspondence. She was in Italy, in Greece, in the East, in the Holy Land, in places and situations that taxed the imagination.

One day, in the darkness of the vestibule, after he had left Scholastica, he was arrested by a little old man of sordid aspect, of whom he could make out hardly more than a pair of sharply-glowing little eyes and an immense bald head, polished like an ivory ball. He was a quite terrible little figure in his way, and Benvolio at first was frightened. "Mr. Poet," said the old man, "let me say a single word. I give my niece a maintenance. She may do what she likes. But she forfeits every stiver of her allowance and her expectations if she is fool enough to marry a fellow who scribbles rhymes. I'm told they are sometimes an hour finding two that will