Anna was never in the least suspicious, or on the watch for quibbles, but took all things for granted, so now she thought within herself, “Lillian, most likely. What a sweet name it is.” Then she said aloud. “You were not engaged to her outright, were you?” John started forward and gazed into his sister’s face with an expression as if he wished she would question him more closely, for confession to such as she might ease his burdened conscience, but Anna never dreamed of a secret, and seeing him hesitate, she said, “You need not tell me unless you like. I only thought maybe, you and Lilly were not engaged.” “We were;” and rising to his feet John leaned his forehead upon the marble mantel, which cooled its feverish throbbings. “Anna, I’m a wretch—a miserable wretch, and have scarcely known an hour’s peace since I left her.” “Was there a scene?” Anna asked; and John replied, “Worse than that. Worse for her. She did not know I was going till I was gone. I wrote to her from Paris, for I could not meet her face and tell her how mean I was. I’ve thought of her so much, and when I landed in New York I went at once to find her, or at least to inquire, hoping she’d forgotten me. The beldame who kept the place was not the same with whom I had left Lily, but she knew about her, and told me she died with cholera last September. She and—oh, Lily, Lily——” and hiding his face in Anna’s lap, John Richards sobbed like a little child. Had Anna been possessed of ordinary penetration, she would have guessed that behind all this there was something yet untold, but she had literally no penetration at all. In her nature there was no deceit, and she never suspected it in others, until it became too palpable not to be seen. Very caressingly her white hand smoothed the daintily perfumed hair resting on her dress, and her own tears mingled with her wayward brother’s as she thought, “His burden is greater than mine. I will help him bear it if I can.” “John,” she said at last, when the sobbing had ceased, “I do not think you so much to blame as others, and you must not reproach yourself so bitterly. You say Lily was good. Do you mean she was a Christian, like Charlie?” “Yes, if there ever was one. Why, she used to make a villain like me kneel with her every night, and say the Lord’s Prayer.” For an instant, a puzzling thought crossed Anna’s brain as to the circumstances which could have brought her brother every night to Lily’s side, but it passed away immediately as she rejoined,