Shall we think this smooth little fair-skinned Lillie is a cold-hearted monster, because her heart does not beat faster at these letters which she does not understand, and which strike her as unnecessarily prolix and prosy?  Why should John insist on telling her his feelings and opinions on a vast variety of subjects that she does not care a button for?  She doesn’t know any thing about ritualism and anti-ritualism; and, what’s more, she doesn’t care.  She hates to hear so much about religion.  She thinks it’s pokey.  John may go to any church he pleases, for all her.  As to all that about his favorite poems, she don’t like poetry,—­never could,—­don’t see any sense in it; and John will be quoting ever so much in his letters.  Then, as to the love parts,—­it may be all quite new and exciting to John; but she has, as she said, heard that story over and over again, till it strikes her as quite a matter of course.  Without doubt the whole world is a desert where she is not:  the thing has been asserted, over and over, by so many gentlemen of credible character for truth and veracity, that she is forced to believe it; and she cannot see why John is particularly to be pitied on this account.  He is in no more desperate state about her than the rest of them; and secretly Lillie has as little pity for lovers’ pangs as a nice little white cat has for mice.  They amuse her; they are her appropriate recreation; and she pats and plays with each mouse in succession, without any comprehension that it may be a serious thing for him.

When Lillie was a little girl, eight years old, she used to sell her kisses through the slats of the fence for papers of candy, and thus early acquired the idea that her charms were a capital to be employed in trading for the good things of life.  She had the misfortune—­and a great one it is—­to have been singularly beautiful from the cradle, and so was praised and exclaimed over and caressed as she walked through the streets.  She was sent for, far and near; borrowed to be looked at; her picture taken by photographers.  If one reflects how many foolish and inconsiderate people there are in the world, who have no scruple in making a pet and plaything of a pretty child, one will see how this one unlucky lot of being beautiful in childhood spoiled Lillie’s chances of an average share of good sense and goodness.  The only hope for such a case lies in the chance of possessing judicious parents.  Lillie had not these.  Her father was a shrewd grocer, and nothing more; and her mother was a competent cook and seamstress.  While he traded in sugar and salt, and she made pickles and embroidered under-linen, the pretty Lillie was educated as pleased Heaven.