mile, "but we
will try to be charitable and think the remark was not unkindly meant."

Edward took Miss Deane in to supper, which was presently announced. Zoe
did not like that, as Elsie perceived with some concern.

The young lady had very fine conversational powers and was very fond of
displaying them; she soon obtained and held the attention of all the older
people at the table, and Zoe felt herself more and more aggrieved. Edward
was positively careless of her wants, leaving her to be waited upon by the
servants.

When they returned to the drawing-room he seated himself beside Miss Deane
again, and the flow of talk recommenced, he continuing a delighted
listener.

Zoe feigned not to notice or care, but it was a very transparent pretence.
Edward had devoted himself so almost exclusively to her ever since their
marriage, that she could scarce endure to have it otherwise.

She could not refrain from watching him furtively and trying to catch his
every look, word and tone.

After a little she stole quietly from the room and went up to her own.

"He will miss me presently," she thought, "remember about the lessons, and
come up to hear them, and I'll have him all to myself for at least a
little while."

He did not come, but at length Rosie looked in to say, "Won't you come
down to the music-room, Zoe? Miss Fleming is going to play for us, and she
is said to be quite a wonderful performer."

Zoe accepted the invitation; she was fond of music, and it wasn't Miss
Fleming who had robbed her of Edward. Yet, when she saw him standing
beside her, a rapt and delighted listener, and assiduously turning her
music, she began to almost hate her, too.

The advent of these two strangers seemed to have rendered ineffectual all
the efforts she had put forth that day to gratify her husband; of what
use was it that she had so carefully prepared the lessons he would not
trouble himself to hear? or that she had spent hours of patient practice
at the piano in learning the song she was given no opportunity to play and
sing?

But womanly pride was awaking within her, and she made a tolerably
successful effort to control and hide her feelings.

When at length she found herself alone with Edward in their own
apartments, she moved silently about making her preparations for retiring,
seeming to have nothing to say.

He burst into enthusiastic praises of the talents of their guests--the
conversational gift of the one, the musical gen