without Lillie in Springdale, Lillie
managed to be blissful without him in New York.

"The bird let loose in Eastern skies" never hastened more fondly home
than she to its glitter and gayety, its life and motion, dash and
sensation. She rustled in all her bravery of curls and frills,
pinkings and quillings,--a marvellous specimen of Parisian frostwork,
without one breath of reason or philosophy or conscience to melt it.

The Follingsbees' house might stand for the original of the Castle of
Indolence.

"Halls where who can tell
What elegance and grandeur wide expand,--
The pride of Turkey and of Persia's land?
Soft quilts on quilts; on carpets, carpets spread;
And couches stretched around in seemly band;
And endless pillows rise to prop the head:
So that each spacious room was one full swelling bed."

It was not without some considerable profit that Mrs. Follingsbee had
read Balzac and Dumas, and had Charlie Ferrola for master of arts
in her establishment. The effect of the whole was perfect; it
transported one, bodily, back to the times of Montespan and Pompadour,
when life was all one glittering upper-crust, and pretty women were
never troubled with even the shadow of a duty.

It was with a rebound of joyousness that Lillie found herself once
more with a crowded list of invitations, calls, operas, dancing, and
shopping, that kept her pretty little head in a perfect whirl of
excitement, and gave her not one moment for thought.

Mrs. Follingsbee, to say the truth, would have been a little careful
about inviting a rival queen of beauty into the circle, were it not
that Charlie Ferrola, after an attentive consideration of the subject,
had assured her that a golden-haired blonde would form a most complete
and effective tableau, in contrast with her own dark rich style of
beauty. Neither would lose by it, so he said; and the impression, as
they rode together in an elegant open barouche, with ermine carriage
robes, would be "stunning." So they called each other _ma soeur_, and
drove out in the park in a ravishing little pony-phaeton all foamed
over with ermine, drawn by a lovely pair of cream-colored horses,
whose harness glittered with gold and silver, after the fashion of the
Count of Monte Cristo. In truth, if Dick Follingsbee did not remind
one of Solomon in all particulars, he was like him in one, that he
"made silver and gold as the stones of the street" in New York.

Lillie's presenc