something quaint and sweet and antique about it, that
suited Grace. Its unfashionable difference from the smart, flippant,
stereotyped rooms of to-day had a charm in her eyes.

Lillie, however, surveyed the scene, the first night that she took
possession, with a quiet determination to re-modernize on the very
earliest opportunity. What would Mrs. Frippit and Mrs. Nippit say to
such rooms, she thought. But then there was time enough to attend to
that. Not a shade of these internal reflections was visible in
her manner. She said, "Oh, how sweet! How perfectly charming! How
splendid!" in all proper places; and John was delighted.

She also fell into the arms of Grace, and kissed her with effusion;
and John saw the sisterly union, which he had anticipated,
auspiciously commencing.

The only trouble in Grace's mind was from a terrible sort of
clairvoyance that seems to beset very sincere people, and makes them
sensitive to the presence of any thing unreal or untrue. Fair and soft
and caressing as the new sister was, and determined as Grace was to
believe in her, and trust her, and like her,--she found an invisible,
chilly barrier between her heart and Lillie. She scolded herself, and,
in the effort to confide, became unnaturally demonstrative, and said
and did more than was her wont to show affection; and yet, to her own
mortification, she found herself, after all, seeming to herself to be
hypocritical, and professing more than she felt.

As to the fair Lillie, who, as we have remarked, was no fool, she
took the measure of her new sister with that instinctive knowledge of
character which is the essence of womanhood. Lillie was not in love
with John, because that was an experience she was not capable of.
But she had married him, and now considered him as her property, her
subject,--_hers_, with an intensity of ownership that should shut out
all former proprietors.

We have heard much talk, of late, concerning the husband's ownership
of the wife. But, dear ladies, is that any more pronounced a fact than
every wife's ownership of her husband?--an ownership so intense
and pervading that it may be said to be the controlling nerve of
womanhood. Let any one touch your right to the first place in your
husband's regard, and see!

Well, then, Lillie saw at a glance just what Grace was, and what her
influence with her brother must be; and also that, in order to live
the life she meditated, John must act under her sway, and not