Meanwhile the subject of his musings walked home in no serene state of mind. If she had been disturbed yesterday, to-day she was cruelly mortified. But it was all owing to her own misconduct. How could she so far forget herself as to share her carriage with an entire stranger! Why had she not resigned it to him, and walked home? But what indiscretion—what utter absence of delicacy to go with him! She could never forgive herself. And poor Ada’s cheek burned with the stinging shame of delicacy compromised. And then she colored, and asked herself “what right she had to suppose herself an object in a visit so natural? Perhaps he had not thought of her at all;” and she began to breathe more freely, when she suddenly remembered his conscious look, when Mrs. Wilson had expatiated upon his kindness in sitting with them so long. Back, then, came thronging confusion and shame; so that by the time Ada reached home, she had tortured herself into a headache, and was obliged to send an apology to Catharine, with whom she had promised to spend that evening. Early the next morning came Catharine on a visit of inquiry. Mr. Stanley (whom she had invited expressly to meet Ada) had been so stupid and so unlike himself that she had been several times on the point of going to sleep; and she had half forgiven him, in the belief that he was stupid with disappointment, when he suddenly interrupted a long pause by relating an adventure which had befallen him the day before. There was a beautiful girl in question, and she it was, and not Ada, who had made Mr. Stanley “duller than the fat weed of Lethe.” Ada then heard _his_ version of their meeting, and Catharine, in the fullness of her indignation, grew so red and angry as she dwelt on the marks of his visible infatuation, that Ada laughed outright. Still she was sufficiently ashamed of the whole affair to have kept it quietly to herself, had the hero thereof been any one but Mr. Stanley. This she now saw was not possible, for in four days the wedding was to take place, and for her own sake the confession must not be withheld. It was made as briefly as possible, and Catharine was so overjoyed that she scarcely marked the cold and discouraging tone of Ada’s recital. “Just like him,” exclaimed she, “to sprain his wrist in saving the life of a little ragged democrat—it is not the first time he has risked himself for others.” And she was now as loud in praise as she had just been in condemnation.