The one person who will not give up, and cannot be expected to be considerate or accommodating, comes at last to rule the whole circle.  He is counted on like the fixed facts of nature; everybody else must turn out for him.  So Lillie reigned in Springdale.  In every little social gathering where she appeared, the one uneasy question was, would she have a good time, and anxious provision made to that end.  Lillie had declared that reading aloud was a bore, which was definitive against reading-parties.  She liked to play and sing; so that was always a part of the programme.  Lillie sang well, but needed a great deal of urging.  Her throat was apt to be sore; and she took pains to say that the harsh winter weather in Springdale was ruining her voice.  A good part of an evening was often spent in supplications before she could be induced to make the endeavor.

Lillie had taken up the whim of being jealous of Rose.  Jealousy is said to be a sign of love.  We hold another theory, and consider it more properly a sign of selfishness.  Look at noble-hearted, unselfish women, and ask if they are easily made jealous.  Look, again, at a woman who in her whole life shows no disposition to deny herself for her husband, or to enter into his tastes and views and feelings:  are not such as she the most frequently jealous?

Her husband, in her view, is a piece of her property; every look, word, and thought which he gives to any body or thing else is a part of her private possessions, unjustly withheld from her.

Independently of that, Lillie felt the instinctive jealousy which a passee queen of beauty sometimes has for a young rival.

She had eyes to see that Rose was daily growing more and more beautiful; and not all that young girl’s considerateness, her self-forgetfulness, her persistent endeavors to put Lillie forward, and make her the queen of the hour, could disguise this fact.  Lillie was a keen-sighted little body, and saw, at a glance, that, once launched into society together, Rose would carry the day; all the more that no thought of any day to be carried was in her head.

Rose Ferguson had one source of attraction which is as great a natural gift as beauty, and which, when it is found with beauty, makes it perfectly irresistible; to wit, perfect unconsciousness of self.  This is a wholly different trait from unselfishness:  it is not a moral virtue, attained by voluntary effort, but a constitutional gift, and a very great one.  Fenelon praises it as a Christian grace, under the name of simplicity; but we incline to consider it only as an advantage of natural organization.  There are many excellent Christians who are haunted by themselves, and in some form or other are always busy with themselves; either conscientiously pondering the right and wrong of their actions, or approbatively sensitive to the opinions of others, or aesthetically comparing their appearance and manners with an interior standard; while there are others who have received the gift, beyond the artist’s eye or the musician’s ear, of perfect self-forgetfulness.  Their religion lacks the element of conflict, and comes to them by simple impulse.