, and I have kept things up; but
then there are so many who want to see _you_, and so many things that
you alone could settle and manage."

"Oh, yes! I'll go to-morrow," said John. "And, after this, I shall
be steady at it. I wonder if we could get Lillie to go," said he,
doubtfully.

Grace did not answer. Lillie was a subject on which it was always
embarrassing to her to be appealed to. She was so afraid of appearing
jealous or unappreciative; and her opinions were so different from
those of her brother, that it was rather difficult to say any thing.

"Do you think she would like it, Grace?"

"Indeed, John, you must know better than I. If anybody could make her
take an interest in it, it would be you."

Before his marriage, John had always had the idea that pretty,
affectionate little women were religious and self-denying at heart, as
matters of course. No matter through what labyrinths of fashionable
follies and dissipation they had been wandering, still a talent for
saintship was lying dormant in their natures, which it needed only the
touch of love to develop. The wings of the angel were always concealed
under the fashionable attire of the belle, and would unfold themselves
when the hour came. A nearer acquaintance with Lillie, he was forced
to confess, had not, so far, confirmed this idea. Though hers was a
face so fair and pure that, when he first knew her, it suggested ideas
of prayer, and communion with angels, yet he could not disguise from
himself that, in all near acquaintance with her, she had proved to
be most remarkably "of the earth, earthy." She was alive and fervent
about fashionable gossip,--of who is who, and what does what; she was
alive to equipages, to dress, to sightseeing, to dancing, to any thing
of which the whole stimulus and excitement was earthly and physical.
At times, too, he remembered that she had talked a sort of pensive
sentimentalism, of a slightly religious nature; but the least idea of
a moral purpose in life--of self-denial, and devotion to something
higher than immediate self-gratification--seemed never to have entered
her head. What is more, John had found his attempts to introduce such
topics with her always unsuccessful. Lillie either gaped in his face,
and asked him what time it was; or playfully pulled his whiskers, and
asked him why he didn't take to the ministry; or adroitly turned the
conversation with kissing and compliments.

Sunday morning came, shining down glor