“Well, you know, John, I never saw her,” said Grace, deprecatingly, “and so you can’t wonder.”

“Oh, yes, of course!  Don’t wonder in the least.  It comes rather sudden,—­and then you haven’t seen her.  Look, here is her photograph!” said John, producing one from the most orthodox innermost region, directly over his heart.  “Look there! isn’t it beautiful?”

“It is a very sweet face,” said Grace, exerting herself to be sympathetic, and thankful that she could say that much truthfully.

[Illustration:  “It is a very sweet face.”]

“I can’t imagine,” said John, “what ever made her like me.  You know she has refused half the fellows in the country.  I hadn’t the remotest idea that she would have any thing to say to me; but you see there’s no accounting for tastes;” and John plumed himself, as young gentlemen do who have carried off prizes.

“You see,” he added, “it’s odd, but she took a fancy to me the first time she saw me.  Now, you know, Gracie, I never found it easy to get along with ladies at first; but Lillie has the most extraordinary way of putting a fellow at his ease.  Why, she made me feel like an old friend the first hour.”

“Indeed!”

“Look here,” said John, triumphantly drawing out his pocket-book, and producing thence a knot of rose-colored satin ribbon.  “Did you ever see such a lovely color as this?  It’s so exquisite, you see!  Well, she always is wearing just such knots of ribbon, the most lovely shades.  Why, there isn’t one woman in a thousand could wear the things she does.  Every thing becomes her.  Sometimes it’s rose color, or lilac, or pale blue,—­just the most trying things to others are what she can wear.”

“Dear John, I hope you looked for something deeper than the complexion in a wife,” said Grace, driven to moral reflections in spite of herself.

“Oh, of course!” said John:  “she has such soft, gentle, winning ways; she is so sympathetic; she’s just the wife to make home happy, to be a bond of union to us all.  Now, in a wife, what we want is just that.  Lillie’s mind, for instance, hasn’t been cultivated as yours and Letitia’s.  She isn’t at all that sort of girl.  She’s just a dear, gentle, little confiding creature, that you’ll delight in.  You’ll form her mind, and she’ll look up to you.  You know she’s young yet.”

“Young, John!  Why, she’s seven and twenty,” said Grace, with astonishment.

“Oh, no, my dear Gracie! that is all a mistake.  She told me herself she’s only twenty.  You see, the trouble is, she went into company injudiciously early, a mere baby, in fact; and that causes her to have the name of being older than she is.  But, I do assure you, she’s only twenty.  She told me so herself.”

“Oh, indeed!” said Grace, prudently choking back the contradiction which she longed to utter.  “I know it seems a good many summers since I heard of her as a belle at Newport.”