les, and
he would set her to improving her mind, and gradually the vision of
this empty, fashionable life would die out of her horizon, and she
would come into his ways of thinking and doing.

But, after all, John managed to be proud of her. When he read in the
columns of "The Herald" the account of the Splandangerous ball in
Newport, and of the entrancingly beautiful Mrs. J.S., who appeared in
a radiant dress of silvery gauze made _a la nuage_, &c., &c., John was
rather pleased than otherwise. Lillie danced till daylight,--it showed
that she must be getting back her strength,--and she was voted the
belle of the scene. Who wouldn't take the comfort that is to be got
in any thing? John owned this fashionable meteor,--why shouldn't he
rejoice in it?

Two years ago, had anybody told him that one day he should have a wife
that told fibs, and painted, and smoked cigarettes, and danced all
night at Newport, and yet that he should love her, and be proud
of her, he would have said, Is thy servant a dog? He was then a
considerate, thoughtful John, serious and careful in his life-plans;
and the wife that was to be his companion was something celestial.
But so it is. By degrees, we accommodate ourselves to the actual and
existing. To all intents and purposes, for us it is the inevitable.

CHAPTER XII.

_HOME A LA POMPADOUR_.

Well, Lillie came back at last; and John conducted her over the
transformed Seymour mansion, where literally old things had passed
away, and all things become new.

There was not a relic of the past. The house was furbished and
resplendent--it was gilded--it was frescoed--it was _a la_ Pompadour,
and _a la_ Louis Quinze and Louis Quatorze, and _a la_ every thing
Frenchy and pretty, and gay and glistening. For, though the parlors at
first were the only apartments contemplated in this _renaissance_,
yet it came to pass that the parlors, when all tricked out, cast
such invidious reflections on the chambers that the chambers felt
themselves old and rubbishy, and prayed and stretched out hands of
imploration to have something done for _them_!

So the spare chamber was first included in the glorification
programme; but, when the spare chamber was once made into a Pompadour
pavilion, it so flouted and despised the other old-fashioned Yankee
chambers, that they were ready to die with envy; and, in short, there
was no way to produce a sense of artistic unity, peace, and quietness,
but to do the whole