"You used to be shockingly independent, I know. What a ridiculously honest little puss you were! How you despised all our pretty arts and necessary affectations! How you hated our economical mother's second-best furniture and dinners! I don't believe Victoria West has ever forgiven you for the way in which you used to take to pieces what you styled our 'surface talk and surface life!' I thought, however, that you had discovered by this time, that one cannot live in the world without deceiving herself or other people; I prefer making fools to being one. Heigh-ho! this life is a very unsatisfactory business at the best. What a heavenly collar that is of yours! One thing I do wish, and that is--that my husband were half as fond of me, or as good to me, as Lewis is to you!" CHAPTER XIV. Lewis Hammond had thrown the whole weight of his influence in the family conclave into the Newport scale; and to this popular resort Sarah went, in July, in company with the Bensons, her mother and Jeannie, who was made one of the party at Lewis' request and expense. The generous fellow acted in conformity with conscience and judgment in this temporary exile of his treasures; and, consistent in his purpose of rendering it a pleasure excursion to his wife, he made very light of his prospects of lonely widowerhood, representing, instead, the benefit she and the babe would draw from the sea-breezes, and his enhanced enjoyment of his weekly visits, because they were so far apart. He went with them to the shore, at their general flitting, and spent two days; saw for himself that those whose comfort was nearest his heart were properly accommodated; privately feed chambermaid and waiter, with hints of future emolument to accrue to them from special regard to the wants of Mrs. Hammond and her infant, and returned to town with the unenviable consciousness of having left at least three-fourths of himself behind him. A brisk rush of business beguiled him of the aching, hollow void for a few hours after he got back. Not even Baby Belle's accents could be heard amid that roar and whir. But at luncheon-time, while waiting for his order to be filled at a restaurant, the dreary, solitary void overtook him--a fit of unmistakable home-sickness, that yet caused him to recoil at the idea of entering the deserted house uptown, when evening should oblige him to seek a lodging. How were Sarah and baby getting along without him? He was afraid that Lucy was not, in all respects, as congenial a companion as he could have wished his wife to have, and that Mrs. Hunt's undisguised worldliness, her foolish love of fashion and display, would often annoy and mortify her sensible and right-judging daughter. Benson was capital company, though--a gentleman every inch of him! and very friendly to Sarah. But for her reserved manners he would act the part of a real brother to her; in any case, he would be kind, and see that she wanted for nothing.