uin--I confess I DO dread the
glance of her reproving eye."

"It is odd enough that you should dread reproval from the governess of
your sisters when you do not dread it from your own mother! But
Mademoiselle Hennequin has nothing to do with you. You were educated
and out before she entered your family, and it is singular that a
person not older than yourself, who was engaged in Paris so recently,
should have obtained so much influence over the mind of one who never
was her pupil."

"I am not afraid of her in most things," rejoined Julia, "but I confess
I am in all that relates to taste; particularly in what relates to
extravagance."

"I have greatly misunderstood the character of Mademoiselle Hennequin
if she ventured to interfere with you in either! A governess ought not
to push her control beyond her proper duties."

"Nor has Mademoiselle Hennequin," answered Julia honestly. "Still I
cannot but hear the lessons she gives my sisters, and--yes--to own the
truth, I dread the glance she cannot avoid throwing on my purchase. It
will say, 'of what use are all my excellent lessons in taste and
prudence, if an elder sister's example is to counteract them?' It is
THAT I dread."

Mary was silent for fully a minute; then she smiled archly, as girls
will smile when certain thoughts cross their playful imaginations, and
continued the discourse.

"And Betts Shoreham has nothing to do with all this dread?"

"What is Betts Shoreham to me, or what am I to Betts Shoreham? I am
sure the circumstances that we happened to come from Europe in the same
packet, and that he continues to visit us now we are at home, do not
entitle him to have a veto, as they call it, on my wardrobe."

"Not YET, certainly, my dear. Still they may entitle him to have this
VETO, in petto."

{in petto = in private (Italian)}

I thought a shade passed over the features of the pretty Julia Monson
as she answered her friend, with a seriousness to show that she was now
in earnest, and with a propriety that proved she had great good sense
at bottom, as well as strong womanly feeling.

"If I have learned nothing else by visiting Europe," she said, "I have
learned to see how inconsiderate we girls are in America, in talking so
much, openly, of this sort of thing. A woman's delicacy is like that of
a tender flower, and it must suffer by having her name coupled with
that of any man, except him that she is to marry."

"Julia, dear, I will never speak of Mr.