ing our house, you know"--

"But, Lillie, it was to please you."

"Oh, I know it! but you know I begged you not to. Well, John, I don't
think I should like to go in and settle down on Grace; perhaps, as I
am here, and the sea-air and bathing strengthens me so, we may as well
put it through. I will come home as soon as the house is done."

"But perhaps you would want to go with me to New York to select the
furniture?"

"Oh, the artist does all that! Charlie Ferrola will give his orders to
Simon & Sauls, and they will do every thing up complete. It's the way
they all do--saves lots of trouble."

John went home, after three days spent in Newport, feeling that Lillie
was somehow an injured fair one, and that the envious world bore down
always on beauty and prosperity.

But incidentally he heard and overheard much that made him uneasy. He
heard her admired as a "bully" girl, a "fast one;" he heard of her
smoking, he overheard something about "painting."

The time was that John thought Lillie an embryo angel,--an angel a
little bewildered and gone astray, and with wings a trifle the worse
for the world's wear,--but essentially an angel of the same nature
with his own revered mother.

Gradually the mercury had been falling in the tube of his estimation.
He had given up the angel; and now to himself he called her "a silly
little pussy," but he did it with a smile. It was such a neat, white,
graceful pussy; and all his own pussy too, and purred and rubbed its
little head on no coat-sleeve but his,--of that he was certain. Only
a bit silly. She would still _fib_ a little, John feared, especially
when he looked back to the chapter about her age,--and then, perhaps,
about the cigarettes.

Well, she might, perhaps, in a wild, excited hour, have smoked _one
or two_, just for fun, and the thing had been exaggerated. She had
promised fairly to return those cigarettes,--he dared not say to
himself that he feared she would not. He kept saying to himself that
she would. It was necessary to say this often to make himself believe
it.

As to painting--well, John didn't like to ask her, because, what if
she shouldn't tell him the truth? And, if she did paint, was it so
great a sin, poor little thing? he would watch, and bring her out of
it. After all, when the house was all finished and arranged, and he
got her back from Newport, there would be a long, quiet, domestic
winter at Springdale; and they would get up their reading-circ