“I am sure I am very much flattered,” said John, his heart beating thick and fast.  “May I ask why you honor me with such a wish?”

“Well, to tell the truth, because you strikingly resemble a very dear friend of mine,” said Miss Ellis, with her sweet, unconscious simplicity of manner.

“I am still more flattered,” said John, with a quicker beating of the heart; “only I fear that you may find me an unpleasant contrast.”

“Oh!  I think not,” said Lillie, with another smile:  “we shall soon be good friends, too, I trust.”

“I trust so certainly,” said John, earnestly.

Belle Trevors now joined the party; and the four were soon chatting together on the best footing of acquaintance.  John was delighted to feel himself already on easy terms with the fair vision.

“You have not been here long?” said Lillie to John.

“No, I have only just arrived.”

“And you were never here before?”

“No, Miss Ellis, I am entirely new to the place.”

“I am an old habituee here,” said Lillie, “and can recommend myself as authority on all points connected with it.”

“Then,” said John, “I hope you will take me under your tuition.”

“Certainly, free of charge,” she said, with another ravishing smile.

“You haven’t seen the boiling spring yet?” she added.

“No, I haven’t seen any thing yet.”

“Well, then, if you’ll give me your arm across the lawn, I’ll show it to you.”

All of this was done in the easiest, most matter-of-course manner in the world; and off they started, John in a flutter of flattered delight at the gracious acceptance accorded to him.

Ethridge and Belle Trevors looked after them with a nod of intelligence at each other.

“Hooked, by George!” said Ethridge.

“Well, it’ll be a good thing for Lillie, won’t it?”

“For her?  Oh, yes, a capital thing for her!”

“Well, for him too.”

“Well, I don’t know.  John is a pretty nice fellow; a very nice fellow, besides being rich, and all that; and Lillie is somewhat shop-worn by this time.  Let me see:  she must be seven and twenty.”

“Oh, yes, she’s all that!” said Belle, with ingenuous ardor.  “Why, she was in society while I was a schoolgirl!  Yes, dear Lillie is certainly twenty-seven, if not more; but she keeps her freshness wonderfully.”

“Well, she looks fresh enough, I suppose, to a good, honest, artless fellow like John Seymour, who knows as little of the world as a milkmaid.  John is a great, innocent, country steer, fed on clover and dew; and as honest and ignorant of all sorts of naughty, wicked things as his mother or sister.  He takes Lillie in a sacred simplicity quite refreshing; but to me Lillie is played out.  I know her like a book.  I know all her smiles and wiles, advices and devices; and her system of tactics is an old story with me.  I shan’t interrupt any of her little games.  Let her have her little field all to herself:  it’s time she was married, to be sure.”