she longed
to be after them once more. Had she not a prestige now as a rich young
married lady? Had she not jewels and gems to show? Had she not any
number of mouse-traps, in the way of ravishing toilets? She thought it
all over, till she was sick with longing, and was sure that nothing
but the sea-air could do her any good; and so she fell to crying, and
kissing her faithful John, till she gained her end, like a veritable
little cat as she was.

CHAPTER XI.

_NEWPORT; OR, THE PARADISE OF NOTHING TO DO_.

Behold, now, our Lillie at the height of her heart's desire, installed
in fashionable apartments at Newport, under the placid chaperonship
of dear mamma, who never saw the least harm in any earthly thing her
Lillie chose to do.

All the dash and flash and furbelow of upper-tendom were there; and
Lillie now felt the full power and glory of being a rich, pretty,
young married woman, with oceans of money to spend, and nothing on
earth to do but follow the fancies of the passing hour.

This was Lillie's highest ideal of happiness; and didn't she enjoy it?

Wasn't it something to flame forth in wondrous toilets in the eyes of
Belle Trevors and Margy Silloway and Lottie Cavers, who were _not_
married; and before the Simpkinses and the Tomkinses and the
Jenkinses, who, last year, had said hateful things about her, and
intimated that she had gone off in her looks, and was on the way to be
an old maid?

And wasn't it a triumph when all her old beaux came flocking round
her, and her parlors became a daily resort and lounging-place for all
the idle swains, both of her former acquaintance and of the newcomers,
who drifted with the tide of fashion? Never had she been so much the
rage; never had she been declared so "stunning." The effect of all
this good fortune on her health was immediate. We all know how the
spirits affect the bodily welfare; and hence, my dear gentlemen, we
desire it to be solemnly impressed on you, that there is nothing so
good for a woman's health as to give her her own way.

Lillie now, from this simple cause, received enormous accessions of
vigor. While at home with plain, sober John, trying to walk in the
quiet paths of domesticity, how did her spirits droop! If you only
could have had a vision of her brain and spinal system, you would have
seen how there was no nervous fluid there, and how all the fine little
cords and fibres that string the muscles were wilting like flowers out
of water