did not. The wife drew a long breath, and said, "It must be very
pleasant."

The girl said--rather more hungrily, I fancied--"Yes, indeed."

I don't know why their interest should have prompted me to go on and
paint the lily a little, but I certainly did so. I did not stop
till the music began again, and I had to stop. By the time the
piece was finished I had begun to have my misgivings, and I profited
by the brief interval of silence to say to the young girl, "I
wouldn't have you think we are a whirl of gaiety exactly."

"Oh no," she answered pathetically, as if she were quite past
expecting that or anything like it.

We were silent again. At the end of the next piece they all rose,
and the wife said timidly to me, "Well, good-evening," as if she
might be venturing too far; and her husband came to her rescue with
"Well, good-evening, sir." The young girl merely bowed.

I did not stay much longer, for I was eager to get home and tell my
wife about my adventure, which seemed to me of a very rare and
thrilling kind. I believed that if I could present it to her duly,
it would interest her as much as it had interested me. But somehow,
as I went on with it in the lamplight of her room, it seemed to lose
colour and specific character.

"You are always making up these romances about young girls being off
and disappointed of a good time ever since we saw that poor little
Kitty Ellison with her cousins at Niagara," said Mrs. March. "You