"She ought not. _On dit_ that Ellen Morris has supplanted me in your bachelor friendship; and she is not likely to marry." "Any more than myself--but Ellen Morris is not Josephine Read. Old maids are a much-abused class of the community; I trust to her to redeem their character, but Josephine is a frightful counterpoise. If you had remained single!" "But I didn't!" says Ida, smiling archly at her liege lord. "And you two have only yourselves to blame." "And Lelia Arnold!" subjoins Mr. Lacy, teasingly. "There is another enchanting spinster, Charley." Ida is grave. "You observe my wife nurses her jealousy yet." "I pity her, Morton! not for losing you,--but I shall always think that she loved Richard Copeland as sincerely as it was in her nature to do." "Why dismiss him, then?" queries Charley. "She had the credit of it. In my opinion, he made her discard Mr. Lacy by threats or blandishments; then punished her perfidy to him and others by violating his engagement." "An unmanly act--but a just lesson! He is marvellously improved by his marriage. Was it a love-match?" "I believe so. Alice is a lovely girl; just the equable temperament to balance his flightiness. What a contrast to his sister!" "Has she taken the veil?" "Alas! yes! She wrote to me, at her mother's death, that 'having lost both parents, and her brother's marriage making him independent of her cares, she should devote the remnant of her sorrowful days to prayer and expiation of her sins--if penitence and mortification could atone.'" "_If_, indeed!" says Mr. Lacy. "Yet she is more sinned against, than sinning. Her remorse, much as it misguides her, is more creditable than her step-daughter's insensibility." "Poor Josephine!" sighs Ida. "Why 'poor?'" asks Charley. "You, of all people, have least cause to be sorry for her." "I have most, because I know her best. She is not happy--never was--and never will be unless her heart is changed. I have not forgotten the misery of a part of my sojourn with her; yet I honestly preferred my to state hers." "You are very unlike." "Now, perhaps--and I thought we were then; but my mother's training was all that saved my disposition from adapting itself to Mr. Read's mould. She had no talisman. I wish she had a hundredth part of my happiness. A woman is so lonely without a home and friends! They are to us--I do not say to you--necessaries of life." "She can gain them," replies Morton. "You did." "To be taught the inadequacy of perishable things to satisfy a soul which must live forever!" muses Ida, gazing into the blaze. "I can apply literally that text--'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.'" "There are not many who can, in a temporal sense," says Charley. "But who may not, spiritually? Why will men make a comfortless, doleful mystery of our cheerful, life-giving, home Faith? Why not think, write, talk of it?--" "And _act_ it?" interrupts Charley. FINIS.