r, because a letter from John is waiting to be read."

"A letter! How nice!" said Miss Letitia, looking towards the shelf.
"John is as faithful in writing as if he were your lover."

"He is the best lover a woman can have," said Grace, as she busily
sorted and arranged the flowers. "For my part, I ask nothing better
than John."

"Let me arrange for you, while you read your letter," said Letitia,
taking the flowers from her friend's hands.

Miss Grace took down the letter from the mantelpiece, opened, and
began to read it. Miss Letitia, meanwhile, watched her face, as we
often carelessly watch the face of a person reading a letter.

Miss Grace was not technically handsome, but she had an interesting,
kindly, sincere face; and her friend saw gradually a dark cloud rising
over it, as one watches a shadow on a field.

When she had finished the letter, with a sudden movement she laid her
head forward on the table among the flowers, and covered her face with
her hands. She seemed not to remember that any one was present.

[Illustration: "She laid her head forward on the table."]

Letitia came up to her, and, laying her hand gently on hers, said,
"What is it, dear?"

Miss Grace lifted her head, and said in a husky voice,--

"Nothing, only it is so sudden! John is engaged!"

"Engaged! to whom?"

"To Lillie Ellis."

"John engaged to Lillie Ellis?" said Miss Ferguson, in a tone of
shocked astonishment.

"So he writes me. He is completely infatuated by her."

"How very sudden!" said Miss Letitia. "Who could have expected it?
Lillie Ellis is so entirely out of the line of any of the women he has
ever known."

"That's precisely what's the matter," said Miss Grace. "John knows
nothing of any but good, noble women; and he thinks he sees all this
in Lillie Ellis."

"There's nothing to her but her wonderful complexion," said Miss
Ferguson, "and her pretty little coaxing ways; but she is the most
utterly selfish, heartless little creature that ever breathed."

"Well, _she_ is to be John's wife," said Miss Grace, sweeping the
remainder of the flowers into her apron; "and so ends my life
with John. I might have known it would come to this. I must make
arrangements at once for another house and home. This house, so
much, so dear to me, will be nothing to her; and yet she must be its
mistress," she added, looking round on every thing in the room, and
then bursting into tears.

Now, Miss Grace was not one of the cryin