Lily had returned to her sister's household, but though she came home in the heyday of her young beauty, she failed somehow to take up the story of her life just where she had left it in Patmos. On the way home she had refused an offer in London, and shortly after her arrival in America she received a letter from a young gentleman whom she had casually seen in Geneva, and who had found exile insupportable since parting with her, and was ready to return to his native land at her bidding; but she said nothing of these proposals till long afterwards to Professor Elmore, who, she said, had suffered enough from her offers. She went to all the parties and picnics, and had abundant opportunities of flirtation and marriage; but she neither flirted nor married. She seemed to have greatly sobered; and the sound sense which she had always shown became more and more qualified with a thoughtful sweetness. At first, the relation between her and the Elmores lost something of its intimacy; but when, after several years, her health gave way, a familiarity, even kinder than before, grew up. She used to like to come to them, and talk and laugh fondly over their old Venetian days. But often she sat pensive and absent, in the midst of these memories, and looked at Elmore with a regard which he found hard to bear: a gentle, unconscious wonder it seemed, in which he imagined a shade of tender reproach. When she recovered her health, after a journey to the West one winter, they saw that, by some subtile and indefinable difference, she was no longer a young girl. Perhaps it was because they had not met her for half a year. But perhaps it was age,--she was now thirty. However it was, Elmore recognized with a pang that the first youth at least had gone out of her voice and eyes. She only returned to arrange for a long sojourn in the West. She liked the climate and the people, she said; and she seemed well and happy. She had planned starting a Kindergarten school in Omaha with another young lady; she said that she wanted something to do. "She will end by marrying one of those Western widowers," said Mrs. Elmore. "I wonder she didn't take poor old Hoskins," mused Elmore aloud. "No, you don't, dear," said his wife, who had not grown less direct in dealing with him. "You know it would have been ridiculous; besides, she never cared anything for him,--she couldn't. You might as well wonder why she didn't take Captain Ehrhardt after you dismissed him." "_I_ dismissed him?" "You wrote to him, didn't you?" "Celia," cried Elmore, "this I _cannot_ bear. Did I take a single step in that business without her request and your full approval? Didn't you both ask me to write?" "Yes, I suppose we did." "Suppose?" "Well, we _did_,--if you want me to say it. And I'm not accusing you of anything. I know you acted for the best. But you can see yourself, can't you, that it was rather sudden to have it end so quickly--"