"Then may I stay with you awhile? This is such a dear, home-like nook, and it is so dreary out of doors, and not much better down stairs, for Alice is drowsy, and Helen invisible." Ida would have acceded to almost any other proposition more readily, but she submitted with forced complaisance. "Go on with your reading. I shall retire if I interrupt you;" continued Miss Arnold. "I have been reading all the morning;" said Ida, seeing that the other's book was untouched. "And won't my talking annoy you?" cried Miss Arnold with childish pleasure. "I have _so_ longed to know you better--to get nearer to you! Bear with me while I say it; you are so--not exactly stern to me--but so distant! That it was not your nature, I discovered from your demeanor to Alice. I could not but love you for your goodness to her; and--child that I am--I would have entreated you to care for me a little in return--but you froze the words upon my lips. I have cried over it after I went to bed at night. Will you not tell me truly why you dislike me?" The violet eyes were sparkling through tears. "I was not aware that I was so frightful," replied Ida, smiling. "My coldness was imaginary, or unintentional on my part, Miss Arnold." "There!" said the beauty reproachfully; "it was 'Alice' before you had known her a day." "Because we were old schoolmates." "Strangers, nevertheless. Come, _Ida_--be my friend--will you not?" Could a false flirt copy Carry's look and tone so faithfully? and she kneeled upon the rug, as she had done on that November night, when she said, "Love me, Ida!" She could not resist the temptation to lay her lips against the snowy forehead, beneath which those matchless eyes beamed with love and gratitude. She would have recoiled as that satiric whisper again hissed through her heart; but the soft arms were around her--the beautiful head upon her shoulder. "I am not the butterfly I seem, Ida; nor is the ephemera gaiety, in which you see me floating, my proper sphere. I have not your unwavering principle--your independence; I cannot of myself say to the world,--'I hate your vain pageantry, and pine for a nobler life!' Often, often I feel when the din of pleasure is loudest, that I am bound to a wheel whose revolutions I cannot control. Show me how to be happy." "There is but one happiness which cannot die," said Ida, with an effort. "You do not require that I should point you to that!" Her look of sorrowful deprecation was touching. "I know what you mean," she replied, subduedly. "You would intimate, that professing as I do, to be trying to lead a Christian's life, I ought to be as familiar with the path as yourself; but I am a child--too much the toy of impulse and fancy. I have been a pet from my infancy; have leaned upon the judgment--abided by the decision of those I love; and you cannot conceive of the difficulty I have in acting for myself, and in opposition to their wishes."