were listening to the answers.

Hatty, a pale, sickly-looking girl, whose really fine features were marred by unhealthy sullenness and an anxious, fretful expression, was hanging on every word; while the tall schoolgirl Ella, and the smaller, bright-eyed Katie, were standing behind their mother, trying to hide their awkwardness and bashfulness, till Tom came to the rescue by finding them seats, with a whispered hint to Katie that it was not good manners to stare so at a stranger. Edna saw everything with quiet, amused eyes; she satisfied Christine’s curiosity, and found replies to all Mrs. Lambert’s gentle, persistent questioning. Tom, too, claimed her attention by all sorts of dexterous wiles. She must look at him, and thank him, when he found that screen for her; she could not disregard him when he was so solicitous about the draft from the window, so anxious to bring her another cushion.

“I did not know you were such a ladies’ man, Tom,” observed Dr. Lambert presently, in a tone that made Tom retreat with rather a foolish expression.

With all his love for his children, Dr. Lambert was sometimes capable of a smooth sarcasm. Tom felt as though he had been officious; had, in fact, made a fool of himself, and drew off into the background. His father was often hard on him, Tom said to himself, in an aggrieved way, and yet he was only doing his duty, as a son of the house, in waiting on this fascinating young lady.

“Poor boy, he is very young!” thought Edna, who noticed this by-play with some amusement; “but he will grow older some day, and he is very good-looking;” and then she listened with a pretty show of interest to a story Dr. Lambert was telling her of when he was snowed up in Scotland as a boy.

When Bessie returned she found them all in good spirits, and her fellow-traveller laughing and talking as though she had known them for years; even Tom’s brief sulkiness had vanished, and, unmindful of his father’s caustic tongue, he had again ventured to join the charmed circle.

It was quite late before the girls retired to rest, and as Edna followed Bessie up the broad, low staircase, while Tom lighted them from below, she called out gayly. “Good-night, Mr. Lambert; it was worth while being snowed up in the Sheen Valley to make such nice friends, and to enjoy such a pleasant evening.”

Edna really meant what she said, for the moment; she was capable of these brief enthusiasms. Pleasantness of speech, that specious coinage of conventionality, was as the breath of life to her. Her girlish vanity was gratified by the impression she had made on the Lambert family, and even Tom’s crude, boyish admiration was worth something.

“To be all things to all men” is sometimes taken by vain, worldly people in a very different sense from that the apostle intended. Girls of Edna Sefton’s caliber—impressionable, vivacious, egotistical, and capable of a thousand varying moods—will often take their cue from other people, and become grave with the grave, and gay with the gay, until they weary of their role, and of a sudden become their true selves. And yet there is nothing absolutely wrong in these swift, natural transitions; many sympathetic natures act in the same way, by very reason and force of their sympathy. For the time being they go out of themselves, and, as it were, put themselves in other people’s places. Excessive sympathy is capable of minor martyrdom; their reflected suffering borders upon real pain.

When Bessie ushered Edna into her little room, she looked round proudly at the result of her own painstaking thoughtfulness. A bright fire burned in the small grate, and her mother’s easy chair stood beside it—heavy as it was, Bessie had carried it in with her own hands. The best eider-down quilt, in its gay covering, was on the bed, and the new toilet-cover that Christine had worked in blue and white cross-stitch was on the table. Bessie had even borrowed the vase of Neapolitan violets that some patient had sent her father, and the sweet perfume permeated the little room.

Bessie would willingly have heard some encomium on the snug quarters provided for the weary guest, but Edna only looked round her indifferently, and then stifled a yawn.

“Is there anything you want? Can I help you? Oh, I hope you will sleep comfortably!” observed Bessie, a little mortified by Edna’s silence.

“Oh, yes: I am so tired that I am sure I shall sleep well,” returned Edna; and then she added quickly, “but I am so sorry to turn you out of your room.”

“Oh, that does not matter at all, thank you,” replied Bessie, stirring the fire into a cheerful blaze, and then bidding her guest good-night; but Edna, who had taken possession of the easy chair, exclaimed:

“Oh, don’t go yet—it is only eleven, and I am never in bed until twelve. Sit down a moment, and warm yourself.”

“Mother never likes us to be late,” hesitated Bessie; but she lingered, nevertheless. This was not an ordinary evening, and there were exceptions to every rule, so she knelt down on the rug a moment, and watched Edna taking down the long plaits of fair hair that had crowned her shapely head. “What lovely hair!” thought Bessie; “what a beautiful young creature she is altogether!”

Edna was unconscious of the admiration she was exciting. She was looking round her, and trying to realize what her feelings would be if she had to inhabit such a room. “Why, our servants have better rooms,” she thought.

To a girl of Edna’s luxurious habits Bessie’s room looked very poor and mean. The little strips of faded carpet, the small, curtainless bedstead, the plain maple washstand and drawers, the few simple prints and varnished bookcase were shabby enough in Edna’s eyes. She could not understand how any girl could be content with such a room; and yet Bessie’s happiest hours were spent there. What was a little shabbiness, or the wear and tear of homely furniture, to one who saw angels’ footprints even in the common ways of life, and who dreamed sweet, innocent dreams of the splendors of a heavenly home? To these sort of natures even threadbare garments can be worn proudly, for to these free spirits even poverty loses its sting. It is not “how we live,” but “how we think about life,” that stamps our characters, and makes us the men and women that we are.

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CHAPTER III.

HATTY.

The brief silence was broken by Edna.

“What a nice boy your brother is!” she observed, in rather a patronizing tone.

Bessie looked up in some surprise.

“Tom does not consider himself a boy, I assure you; he is one-and-twenty, and ever since he has gone to Oxford he thinks himself of great consequence. I dare say we spoil him among us, as he is our only brother now. If Frank had lived,” and here Bessie sighed, “he would have been five-and-twenty by this time; but he died four years ago. It was such a blow to poor father and mother; he was so good and clever, and he was studying for a doctor; but he caught a severe chill, and congestion of the lungs came on, and in a few days he was dead. I don’t think mother has ever been quite the same since his death—Frank was so much to her.”

“How very sad!” returned Edna sympathetically, for Bessie’s eyes had grown soft and misty as she touched this chord of sadness; “it