“In the name of the people, what are you sitting up for?” was ’Lina’s first remark, followed by a glowing account of what Dr. Richards had said, and the delightful time she’d had. “Only play our cards well, and I’m sure to go home the doctor’s _fiancée_. The doctor thinks I’m very rich. So do all the people here. Lulu has told that I’m an heiress; now don’t you upset it all with your squeamishness about the truth. Nobody will ask you how much I’m worth, so you won’t be compelled to a lie direct. Just keep your own counsel, and leave the rest to me. Will you?” There was, as usual, a feeble remonstrance, and then the weak woman yielded so far as promising to keep silent was concerned, but she asked timidly, “What will you do if you succeed? He must then know how you’ve deceived him.” “Humph! so far, it will be an easy thing. “He thinks I am rich, and I am supposed to think he is. It’s no thanks to him that I know better. But they are very aristocratic, and family position is sometimes better than money. On the whole, I prefer it to wealth. It will be something in this wise,” she continued; “after the honeymoon is past, and my lord hears nothing about bank stock, negroes or lands, he’ll come straight out, and say, ‘Mrs. Richards, I supposed you were rich!’ while Mrs. Richards would retort, ‘And I thought you were rich!’ Don’t you see, it will be an equal thing, and I shall take my chance.” Meantime the doctor sat in his own room near by, thinking of ’Lina Worthington, and wishing she were a little more refined. “Where does she get that coarseness?” he thought. “Not from her mother, certainly. She seems very gentle and lady-like. It must be from the Worthingtons,” and the doctor wondered where he had heard that name before, and why it affected him rather unpleasantly, bringing with it memories of Lily. “Poor Lily,” he sighed mentally. “Your love would have made me a better man if I had not cast it from me. Dear Lily, the mother of my child,” and a tear half trembled in his eye lashes, as he tried to fancy that child, tried to hear the patter of the little feet running to welcome him home, as they might have done had he been true to Lily; tried to hear the baby voice calling him “papa;” to feel the baby hands upon his face—his bearded face—where the great tears were standing now. “I _did_ love Lily,” he murmured; “and had I known of the child I never could have left her. Oh, Lily, come back to me, come!” and his arms were stretched out into empty space, as if he fain would encircle again the girlish form he had so often held in his embrace.