In those days such a marriage was an unusual thing. There was much talk of it, and a song was made about it, and sung in the streets.The bride was twenty years old, and a beauty, a big girl with black hair and a high colour, and a distinction about her as if she were made from whole timber. She had two old unmarried aunts, sisters of her grandfather the peddler, whom the growing fortune of the family had stopped short in a career of hard work and thrift, and made to sit in state in a parlour. When the elder of them first heard rumours of her niece’s engagement she went and paid her a visit, and in the course of the conversation told her a story.“When I was a child, my dear,” she said, “young Baron Rosenkrantz became engaged to a wealthy goldsmith’s daughter. Have you heard such a thing? Your great-grandmother knew her. The bridegroom had a twin sister, who was a lady at Court. She drove to the goldsmith’s house to see the bride. When she had left again, the girl said to her lover: ‘Your sister laughed at my frock, and because, when she spoke French, I could not answer.
