w she
will poison you yet, Mary Harrington."

"I am on the watch constantly," replied the widow. "I don't even engage
a strange servant now for fear it should be one of the old maid's secret
emissaries."

"You are as badly off as the Duke of Buckingham," said Mellen, laughing
at Mrs. Harrington's pretended distress.

"It is dreadful, I assure you," she said, shaking her plumage of lace
and gauze; "but it is very amusing, nevertheless."

"Of course, if you can annoy somebody," answered Mellen; "that is the
very acme of female happiness."

"Oh, you barbarous creature!" cried the widow. "Ain't you ashamed to
utter such atrocious sentiments! Mrs. Mellen, your husband has come back
a perfect savage."

Everybody laughed--it never occurred to the widow it could be at her own
airs and affectations, which were a very clumsy imitation of Elsie's
childish grace; she was too thoroughly satisfied with her own powers of
fascination to suppose it possible, even for an instant, that she could
become a subject of amusement.

"After all, it is tiresome to inspire a _grande passion_," said she,
with a theatrical drawl.

"No woman ought to be better able to decide," cried Elsie; "you have
made enough in all conscience."

"Oh, dear, no!" said the widow.

"Don't deny it," said Elsie, who never scrupled to make sport of her
most intimate friends, and with all her fondness for Mrs. Harrington was
always leading her on to do and say the most absurd things.

Elsie was in the most extravagant spirits, and had been ever since her
brother's return. She flitted about the house like a beautiful elf, and
Elizabeth could see that Mellen watched her every movement, his face
kindling with affection and each look a caress.

"He has not changed," she thought, sadly; "all his tender words to me
came only from the first pleasure of finding himself at home."

Then she began to shudder, as she often did now when the icy chill of
some stern thought crept over her.

"Better so," she muttered; "what should I do with love and
affection--what right have I to expect them from him or any one on
earth. Is not my whole life a lie."

But she banished these reflections quickly, determined to have at least
a few days of perfect freedom from anxieties, a little season of peace
and rest, in which her tired soul might restore its strength, like a
seabird reposing on the sunlit bosom of some inland lake after the
exhaustion of a long and perilous flight am