“You mean that people will talk about you,” said Lillie.  “Well, I assure you, dearest, they will talk awfully, if you are not very careful.  I say this to you frankly, as your friend, you know.”

“Ah, ma petite! you don’t need to tell me that.  I am careful,” said Mrs. Follingsbee.  “I am always lecturing Charlie, and showing him that we must keep up les convenances; but is it not hard on us poor women to lead always this repressed, secretive life?”

“What made you marry Mr. Follingsbee?” said Lillie, with apparent artlessness.

“Darling, I was but a child.  I was ignorant of the mysteries of my own nature, of my capabilities.  As Charlie said to me the other day, we never learn what we are till some congenial soul unlocks the secret door of our hearts.  The fact is, dearest, that American society, with its strait-laced, puritanical notions, bears terribly hard on woman’s heart.  Poor Charlie! he is no less one of the victims of society.”

“Oh, nonsense!” said Lillie.  “You take it too much to heart.  You mustn’t mind all these men say.  They are always being desperate and tragic.  Charlie has talked just so to me, time and time again.  I understand it all.  He talked exactly so to me when he came to Newport last summer.  You must take matters easy, my dear,—­you, with your beauty, and your style, and your money.  Why, you can lead all New York captive!  Forty fellows like Charlie are not worth spoiling one’s dinner for.  Come, cheer up; positively I shan’t let you be blue, ma reine.  Let me ring for your maid to dress you for dinner. Au revoir.”

The fact was, that Mrs. Lillie, having formerly set down this lovely Charlie on the list of her own adorers, had small sympathy with the sentimental romance of her friend.

“What a fool she makes of herself!” she thought, as she contemplated her own sylph-like figure and wonderful freshness of complexion in the glass.  “Don’t I know Charlie Ferrola? he wants her to get him into fashionable life, and knows the way to do it.  To think of that stout, middle-aged party imagining that Charlie Ferrola’s going to die for her charms! it’s too funny!  How stout the dear old thing does get, to be sure!”

[Illustration:  MR. CHARLIE FERROLA.]

It will be observed here that our dear Lillie did not want for perspicacity.  There is nothing so absolutely clear-sighted, in certain directions, as selfishness.  Entire want of sympathy with others clears up one’s vision astonishingly, and enables us to see all the weak points and ridiculous places of our neighbors in the most accurate manner possible.

As to Mr. Charlie Ferrola, our Lillie was certainly in the right in respect to him.  He was one of those blossoms of male humanity that seem as expressly designed by nature for the ornamentation of ladies’ boudoirs, as an Italian greyhound:  he had precisely the same graceful, shivery adaptation to live by petting and caresses.  His tastes were all so exquisite that it was the most difficult thing in the world to keep him out of misery a moment.  He was in a chronic state of disgust with something or other in our lower world from morning till night.