n he
said, "Well, I reckon I must be going," and went rather abruptly,
without offering to take leave of the ladies.

As soon as he was gone, Lily came in from the balcony, and whipped into
Mrs. Elmore's room, from which she flashed again in swift retreat to her
own, and was seen no more; and then Mrs. Elmore came back, with a
flushed face, to where her husband sat mystified.

"My dear," he said gravely, "I'm afraid you've hurt Mr. Hoskins's
feelings."

"Do you think so?" she asked; and then she burst into a wild cry of
laughter. "O, Owen, Owen! you will kill me yet!"

"Really," he replied with dignity, "I don't see any occasion in what I
said for this extraordinary behavior."

"Of course you don't, and that's just what makes the fun of it. So you
found something familiar in Mr. Hoskins's statue from the first, did
you?" she asked. "And you didn't notice anything particular in it?"

"Particular, particular?" he demanded, beginning to lose his patience at
this.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "couldn't you see that it was Lily, all over
again?"

Elmore laughed in turn. "Why, so it is; so it is! That accounts for
everything that puzzled me. I don't wonder my maunderings amused you. It
_was_ ridiculous, to be sure! When in the world did she give him the
sittings, and how did you manage to keep it from me so well?"

"Owen!" cried his wife, with terrible severity. "You don't think that
Lily would _let_ him put her into it?"

"Why, I supposed--I didn't know--I don't see how he could have done it
unless--"

"He did it without leave or license," said Mrs. Elmore. "We saw it all
along, but he never 'let on,' as he would say, about it, and we never
meant to say anything, of course."

"Then," replied Elmore, delighted with the fact, "it has been a purely
unconscious piece of cerebration."

"Cerebration!" exclaimed Mrs. Elmore, with more scorn than she knew how
to express. "I should think as much!"

"Well, I don't know," said Elmore, with the pique of a man who does not
care to be quite trampled under foot. "I don't see that the theory is so
very unphilosophical."

"Oh, not at all!" mocked his wife. "It's philosophical to the last
degree. Be as philosophical as you please, Owen; I shall love you still
the same." She came up to him where he sat, and twisting her arm round
his face, patronizingly kissed him on top of the head. Then she released
him, and left him with another burst of derision.

X.

After this Elmore h