As it was, little Lillie was confessedly no saint; and yet, if much of a sinner, society has as much to answer for as she.  She was the daughter and flower of the Christian civilization of the nineteenth century, and the land of woman, that, on the whole, men of quite distinguished sense have been fond of choosing for wives, and will go on seeking to the end of the chapter.

Did she love John?  Well, she was quite pleased to be loved by him, and she liked the prospect of being his wife.  She was sure he would always let her have her own way, and that he had a plenty of worldly means to do it with.

Lillie, if not very clever in a literary or scientific point of view, was no fool.  She had, in fact, under all her softness of manner, a great deal of that real hard grit which shrewd, worldly people call common sense.  She saw through all the illusions of fancy and feeling, right to the tough material core of things.  However soft and tender and sentimental her habits of speech and action were in her professional capacity of a charming woman, still the fair Lillie, had she been a man, would have been respected in the business world, as one that had cut her eye-teeth, and knew on which side her bread was buttered.

A husband, she knew very well, was the man who undertook to be responsible for his wife’s bills:  he was the giver, bringer, and maintainer of all sorts of solid and appreciable comforts.

Lillie’s bills had hitherto been sore places in the domestic history of her family.  The career of a fashionable belle is not to be supported without something of an outlay; and that innocence of arithmetical combinations, over which she was wont to laugh bewitchingly among her adorers, sometimes led to results quite astounding to the prosaic, hard-working papa, who stood financially responsible for all her finery.

Mamma had often been called in to calm the tumult of his feelings on such semi-annual developments; and she did it by pointing out to him that this heavy present expense was an investment by which Lillie was, in the end, to make her own fortune and that of her family.

When Lillie contemplated the marriage-service with a view to going through it with John, there was one clause that stood out in consoling distinctness,—­“With all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

As to the other clause, which contains the dreadful word “OBEY,” about which our modern women have such fearful apprehensions, Lillie was ready to swallow it without even a grimace.

“Obey John!” Her face wore a pretty air of droll assurance at the thought.  It was too funny.

“My dear,” said Belle Trevors, who was one of Lillie’s incense-burners and a bridesmaid elect, “have you the least idea how rich he is?”

“He is well enough off to do about any thing I want,” said Lillie.

“Well, you know he owns the whole village of Spindlewood, with all those great factories, besides law business,” said Belle.  “But then they live in a dreadfully slow, pokey way down there in Springdale.  They haven’t the remotest idea how to use money.”