able
to throw a word to a dog.

[Illustration: The last Denial.]

To Mrs. Thorne Lily said hardly a word about John Eames, and when her
cousin Bernard questioned her about him she was dumb. And in these
days she could assume a manner, and express herself with her eyes as
well as with her voice, after a fashion, which was apt to silence
unwelcome questions, even though they were as intimate with her as
was her cousin Bernard. She had described her feelings more plainly
to her lover than she had ever done to any one,--even to her mother;
and having done so she meant to be silent on that subject for
evermore. But of her settled purpose she did say some word to Emily
Dunstable that night. "I do feel," she said, "that I have got the
thing settled at last."

"And have you settled it, as you call it, in opposition to the wishes
of all your friends?"

"That is true; and yet I have settled it rightly, and I would not for
worlds have it unsettled again. There are matters on which friends
should not have wishes, or at any rate should not express them."

"Is that meant to be severe to me?"

"No; not to you. I was thinking about mamma, and Bell, and my uncle,
and Bernard, who all seem to think that I am to be looked upon as a
regular castaway because I am not likely to have a husband of my own.
Of course you, in your position, must think a girl a castaway who
isn't going to be married?"

"I think that a girl who is going to be married has the best of it."

"And I think a girl who isn't going to be married has the best of
it;--that's all. But I feel that the thing is done now, and I am
contented. For the last six or eight months there has come up, I know
not how, a state of doubt which as made me so wretched that I have
done literally nothing. I haven't been able to finish old Mrs. Heard's
tippet, literally because people would talk to me about that dearest
of all dear fellows, John Eames. And yet all along I have known how
it would be,--as well as I do now."

"I cannot understand you, Lily; I can't indeed."

"I can understand myself. I love him so well,--with that intimate,
close, familiar affection,--that I could wash his clothes for him
to-morrow, out of pure personal regard, and think it no shame. He
could not ask me to do a single thing for him,--except the one
thing,--that I would refuse. And I'll go further. I would sooner
marry him than any other man in the world I ever saw, or, as I
believe, that I ever shall