"Well, I don't care. I am fairly sick of so much talk and thinking about love and getting married, as if there were nothing else." "Maybe you are different, Maria," admitted Lily, in a humiliated fashion. "I don't want to hear any more about it," Maria said, taking a fresh thread from her skein of white silk. "But do you mean what you said?" "Yes, I do, once for all. That settles it." Lily looked at her wistfully. She did not find Maria as sympathetic as she wished. Then she glanced at her beautiful visage in the glass, and remembered what the other girl had said about her beauty, and again she smiled her childlike smile of gratified vanity and pleasure. Then suddenly the door-bell rang. Lily gave a great start, and turned white as she looked at Maria. "It's George Ramsey," she whispered. "Nonsense! How do you know?" asked Maria, laying her work on the table beside the lamp, and rising. "I don't know. I do know." "Nonsense!" Still Maria stood looking irresolutely at Lily. "I know," said Lily, and she trembled perceptibly. "I don't see how you can tell," said Maria. She made a step towards the door. Lily sprang up. "I am going home," said she. "Going home? Why?" "He has come to see you, and I won't stay. I won't. I know you despised me for what I did the other night, and I won't do such a thing as to stay when he has come to see another girl. I am not quite as bad as that." Lily started towards her cloak, which lay over a chair. Maria seized her by the shoulders with a nervous grip of her little hands. "Lily Merrill," said she, "if you stir, if you dare to stir to go home, I will not go to the door at all!" Lily gasped and looked at her. "I won't!" said Maria. The bell rang a second time. "You have got to go to the door," said Maria, with a sudden impulse. Lily quivered under her hands. "Why? Oh, Maria!" "Yes, you have. You go to the door, and I will run up-stairs the back way to my room. I don't feel well to-night, anyway. I have an awful headache. You go to the door, and if it is--George Ramsey, you tell him I have gone to bed with a headache, and you have come over to stay with me because Aunt Maria has gone away. Then you can ask him in." A flush of incredulous joy came over Lily's face. "You don't mean it, Maria?" she whispered, faintly. "Yes, I do. Hurry, or he'll go away." "Have you got a headache, honest?" "Yes, I have. Hurry, quick! If it is anybody else do as you like about asking him in. Hurry!"