It was a more portly Irving, the Irving with the bright eyes and kindly smile which we have learned to associate with the author of "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," that waited for Rebecca Gratz in the drawing room of her father's home about ten years later. Since the death of Matilda Hoffman, he had grown to be a very close friend of the Gratz family, never failing when in Philadelphia to visit their home where he might "roost," as he put it, in the large, comfortable guest room. He had never referred to his intimate conversation with Rebecca when she had tried to comfort him after Matilda's death; yet their mutual grief and confidence had created a strong bond between them, and when Irving returned from an extended trip abroad, he welcomed the opportunity of going to Philadelphia to see his latest book through the press. For he longed to visit Miss Gratz, who, so the home letters had informed him, had grown to be a famous beauty and belle during his absence.
She came into the room with her swaying, graceful carriage of old days, but with a new dignity and reserve of manner, carrying her lovely head with just a little more pride than in her girlhood, greeting Irving, for all her warm friendliness, like a young queen graciously ready to accept homage from her subjects. She sank into a low chair beside the fire, the flames casting a warm glow over her arms and neck from which her gold colored scarf had slipped at her entrance. Irving thought of another night ten years ago when she had sat in that very chair with the candle light falling upon her blue draperies. Then she had been a lovely girl just on the threshold of life; now she was a cultured, well-poised woman of the world, crowned by virtue of her beauty and position as the ruler of the society in which she moved. He sighed a little and suddenly felt that he was growing old. For a while they spoke of what had occurred during Irving's absence from America, the countries the young author had visited, the great men he had met on his travels. Finally he told her of his visit to Sir Walter Scott, "days of solid enchantment," he described them, from the moment when the famous author had limped down to the gate of his estate in Scotland to welcome him, his favorite stag hound leaping about him, as he grasped his guest's hand.
"We spent much of our time in long rambles over the hills," Irving continued, "Scott telling me legends of the countryside as only he could tell them. And in the evenings we would sit like medieval barons before the blazing logs in the great dim hall at Abbotsford and there would be more stories and confidences until long after midnight. Ah, Rebecca, it was worth a trip across the Atlantic, just to touch his hand."
She leaned toward him, her eyes sparkling. "How I would like to know him—not only his books, which I love so much, but the real man in his home," she cried.
Irving smiled mysteriously. "You may not know him, but he knows you well, my lady. I told him of my American friends, your brother Hyman among them, and, surely, I could not omit you, another heroine to hang in his gallery of fair ladies of romance."
Rebecca shook her head, smilingly. "But I am not a heroine nor a lady of romance," she protested.
"Scott seemed to think you were," Irving insisted. "I told him of your beauty, your goodness—well, you can't deny them," as she raised a protesting hand, "and your loyalty to your people. He had not finished his novel, 'Rob Roy,' then, but he told me he was eager to write a new romance, with the adventures of a lovely Jewess named Rebecca to form the silver thread of the story. He has written me from time to time," went on Irving, as Rebecca smiled a little incredulously, "to tell me how the work progressed. Much of the romance was dictated when Scott lay on a couch too ill to write. He tells me that his two secretaries grew to love the heroine, Rebecca, as much as he did, and that once one of them grew so impatient to hear what became of her, that he looked up from his manuscript and cried: 'That is fine, Mr. Scott—get on—get on!'"
"And did Mr. Scott finally 'get on' and finish his book with a Jewish heroine?" laughed Rebecca.
Irving reached toward the table and handed her a package he had placed there. She broke the string curiously, a slow flush mounting her cheek as she saw the volume, the first to be read by an American, but now in every library in the land. "'Ivanhoe'," she read the tide, softly, "but, surely, I am not in the story."
"He sent me this letter with the volume," answered Irving, drawing a sheet of folded taper from between the pages. "I brought it with me because I knew it would interest you."