For a few moments Kitty sat irresolute; then her love of truth prevailed over every other feeling, and crossing to where John stood, she put her hand on his arm and said: “Please let me speak a word to you all.” In an instant there was a hush throughout the room, and every eye was fixed upon the brave little woman who would not even act a lie, and whose voice was very clear and distinct, as she said: “It would be wrong for me to leave an impression on your minds that I never tried that music before. I have played it many times at home for my husband, and sang it with him when he was practicing. I cannot play at sight like that. I am not a very fine musician.” “But you are a good, conscientious, little darling!” was Lottie’s impulsive exclamation, while a murmur of admiration for this unexpected frankness ran through the room. “I could never have done that, I know I could not. I should just let them think it was my first effort, but somehow I love you better for it,” Lottie whispered to Kitty, when for a moment they stood together alone, and as she said it, the fashionable woman of the world felt that she had learned a lesson of good from plain, simple-hearted Kitty, who found herself the belle of the evening, and received so much attention that when at last she was put into Lottie’s carriage and sent home, with Lottie’s kiss warm on her lips, and Lottie’s assurance that she should see a great deal of her now that she knew her, she felt herself to be in a bewildered, dazed kind of state, sure of nothing except that the door of society, so long locked and barred against her, was open now, and that if she chose, she could enter the charmed circle she had once thought so desirable. “Guess what I’ve brought you, little woman? An invitation to dine with Mrs. Steele! What think you of that?” John said to Kitty one night, about a week after the drawing-room musicale. “The Guiles and Orrs are to be there, too. Quite an affair! You don’t suppose there would be time for you to get a new dress made, do you?” John was a good deal excited, and, if the truth was told, a little proud of being invited to a company dinner with the old and haughty members of the firm. “Just our own people, you know—papa’s family and the Orrs,” Lottie had said to him, and John felt that he was recognized as one of “our own people,” and was flattered accordingly, and said he knew no reason why he should not accept; and thought to himself that Kitty should have a new dress, made with puffs, and ruffles, and bows, and which should stand out like Lottie Steele’s, and have a New York look.