“Oh, you can’t deceive me so!  I believe that you are in love with him,” said Lottie solemnly.

The color rushed to Addie’s face when her vaguely tender sentiments, indefinite as Horace’s attentions, were described in this startling fashion.  “Indeed, I’m nothing of the kind,” she said hurriedly.  “Pray don’t talk such utter nonsense, Lottie.  If you have nothing more sensible to say, you had better hold your tongue.”

“But why are you ashamed of it?” Lottie persisted:  “I wouldn’t be.”  She had an unsuspected secret herself, but she would have owned it proudly enough had she been challenged.

“I’m not ashamed,” said Addie; “and you know nothing about being in love, so you had better not talk about it.”

“Oh yes, I do!” was the reply, uttered with Lottie’s calm simplicity of manner:  “I know how to tell whether you are in love or not, Addie.  What would you do if a girl were to win Horace Thorne away from you?”

Pride and a sense of propriety dictated Addie’s answer and gave sharpness to her voice:  “I should say she was perfectly welcome to him.”

Lottie considered for a moment:  “Yes, I suppose one might say so to her, but what would you do?  Wouldn’t you want to kill her?  And wouldn’t you die of a broken heart?”

Addie was horrified:  “I don’t want to kill anybody, and I’m not going to die for Mr. Horace Thorne.  Please don’t say such things, Lottie:  people never do.  You forget he is only an acquaintance.”

“No; I don’t think you are in love with him, certainly.”  Lottie pronounced this decision with the air of one who has solved a difficult problem.

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Blake inquired, coming back, and glancing from Addie’s flushed and troubled face to Lottie’s thoughtful eyes.

“I was asking Addie if she didn’t want Horace to be the heir.  I know you do, mamma—­oh, just for his own sake, because you think he’s the nicest, don’t you?  I heard you tell him one day “—­here Lottie looked up with a candid gaze and audaciously imitated Mrs. Blake’s manner—­“that though we knew his cousin first, he—­Horace, you know—­seemed to drop so naturally into all our ways that it was quite delightful to feel that we needn’t stand on any ceremony with him.”

“Good gracious, Lottie! what do you mean by listening to every word I say?”

“I didn’t listen—­I heard,” said Lottie.  “I always do hear when you say your words as if they had little dashes under them.”

“Well, Horace Thorne is easier to get on with than his cousin,” said Mrs. Blake, taking no notice of Lottie’s mimicry.

“There, I said so:  mamma would like it to be Horace.  Nobody asks what I should like—­nobody thinks about me and Percival.”

“Oh, indeed!  I wasn’t aware,” said Mrs. Blake.  “When is that to come off?  I dare say you will look very well in orange-blossoms and a pinafore!”