as involuntarily express the fact in my face as I did a moment ago,
and as every one does, I suppose, who meets you. There is nothing
brought to your attention more often, and more pressed upon you.
It must be so. Does not your beauty cause you much anxiety?"

"What a funny question!" laughed Lottie. "Your frankness is
certainly as transparent as those snow-crystals there. I cannot
say that it does. Why should it, even granting that it exists
independently of your disordered imagination?"

"It exposes you to a temptation very hard to resist. Such beauty
as yours should be but the reflex of character. I once saw, in an
art gallery of New York, a marble face so white, pure, and sweet,
that it has ever remained in my memory as an emblem of spiritual
beauty. Suppose every one that came in should touch that face, and
some with coarse and grimy fingers, what a smutched and tawdry look
it would soon have. You cannot help the admiring glances, flattering
words, and the homage that ever waits on beauty, any more than
the marble face the soiling touch of any Vandal hand; but you can
prevent your soul from being stained and smirched with vanity and
pride."

"I never had any one to talk to me in this way," said Lottie, looking
demurely down. "Perhaps I should have been better if I had. I fear
you think me very vain and conceited."

"I should think it very strange if you were not somewhat vain. And
yet you do not act as if you were."

"Supposing I am vain. What difference does it make, if no one knows