“Well, of course he won’t like it; but I can’t help it if he don’t.  Harry ought to know that it’s all nonsense for him and me to think of marrying.  He does know it.”

“To tell the truth, I always thought, Lil, you were more in love with Harry than anybody you ever knew.”

Lillie laughed a little, and then the prettiest sweet-pea flush deepened the pink of her cheeks.

“To say the truth, Belle, I could have been, if he had been in circumstances to marry.  But, you see, I am one of those to whom the luxuries are essential.  I never could rub and scrub and work; in fact, I had rather not live at all than live poor; and Harry is poor, and he always will be poor.  It’s a pity, too, poor fellow, for he’s nice.  Well, he is off in India!  I know he will be tragical and gloomy, and all that,” she said; and then the soft child-face smiled to itself in the glass,—­such a pretty little innocent smile!

All this while, John sat up with his heart beating very fast, writing all about his engagement to his sister, and, up to this point, his nearest, dearest, most confidential friend.  It is almost too bad to copy the letter of a shy man who finds himself in love for the first time in his life; but we venture to make an extract:—­

“It is not her beauty merely that drew me to her, though she is the most beautiful human being I ever saw:  it is the exquisite feminine softness and delicacy of her character, that sympathetic pliability by which she adapts herself to every varying feeling of the heart.  You, my dear sister, are the noblest of women, and your place in my heart is still what it always was; but I feel that this dear little creature, while she fills a place no other has ever entered, will yet be a new bond to unite us.  She will love us both; she will gradually come into all our ways and opinions, and be insensibly formed by us into a noble womanhood.  Her extreme beauty, and the great admiration that has always followed her, have exposed her to many temptations, and caused most ungenerous things to be said of her.

“Hitherto she has lived only in the fashionable world; and her literary and domestic education, as she herself is sensible, has been somewhat neglected.

“But she longs to retire from all this; she is sick of fashionable folly, and will come to us to be all our own.  Gradually the charming circle of cultivated families which form our society will elevate her taste, and form her mind.

“Love is woman’s inspiration, and love will lead her to all that is noble and good.  My dear sister, think not that any new ties are going to make you any less to me, or touch your place in my heart.  I have already spoken of you to Lillie, and she longs to know you.  You must be to her what you have always been to me,—­guide, philosopher, and friend.

“I am sure I never felt better impulses, more humble, more thankful, more religious, than I do now.  That the happiness of this soft, gentle, fragile creature is to be henceforth in my hands is to me a solemn and inspiring thought.  What man is worthy of a refined, delicate woman?  I feel my unworthiness of her every hour; but, so help me God, I shall try to be all to her that a husband should; and you, my sister, I know, will help me to make happy the future which she so confidingly trusts to me.