"I am only stupid," he replied, with an attempt at playfulness. "I have been forced to talk so incessantly to those people, that I have no ideas left." "I am sure conversation with people in general doesn't consume one's ideas," she said, with a lightness which appeared forced like his own. "How long does Mrs. Harrington stay?" he asked. "Only till to-morrow. You don't like her, I fancy?" "There is too much of her in every way," he said, peevishly; "she dresses too much, talks too much--she tires one." "That is very cruel and ungrateful; the lady confided to me only a little while ago that she had a profound admiration for you, and was dying to get up a flirtation, if I did not mind." "Don't repeat such nonsense," he said, almost rudely, "you know how I hate it. I think either the married man or woman who flirts, deserves to be as severely punished as if he or she had committed an actual crime." "I am afraid you would condemn the greater part of our acquaintance," she said. "After all, with most women it arises only from thoughtlessness." "Thoughtlessness!" he repeated satirically. "I can only say that the woman who endangers her husband's peace from want of thought, is more culpable than a person who does wrong knowingly, urged on by recklessness or passion." "I have never thought about it," said Elizabeth vaguely; "it may be so." She was playing with her bracelets again; the action reminded him of the lost trinket. He did not speak, but a restrained burst of passion broke over his face, which might have changed a plan she was revolving in her mind, had she seen or understood it. It was too late! That moment Elsie came dancing into the room, her thin evening dress floating around her like a summer cloud, her fair hair wreathed with flowers, and everything about her so pure and ethereal, that it seemed almost as if she must breathe some more joyous air than the pain-freighted atmosphere which weighed so heavily on others. She was holding her hands behind her, and ran towards them in her childish way, exclaiming: "I have found something! Who'll give a reward? Won't you both be glad--guess what it is!" Mellen's face had brightened a little at her entrance, but as she spoke a sudden thought shook his soul like a tempest. "What is it?" Elizabeth asked. "Oh, guess, guess!" "But I never can guess," she replied, seeming to enter into the spirit of the thing. "You try, Grant. Come, do credit to your Yankee descent!" He rose suddenly and stood looking full in his wife's face, fixing her glance with a quick thrill of terror, which the least thing unusual in his manner caused her now. Elsie began to dance up and down before the hearth, exclaiming: "Oh! you provoking things--you stupid owls! Now do guess--oh! Grant, just try. Tell me what I have found." Mellen's eyes had not moved from his wife's face.