"To choose," said Lilias. "I know as much as that." "Yes," said Jean, a little doubtfully, "I suppose you may say you have to choose; but you would not like to hurt a gentleman's feelings by giving him a refusal. I don't think that is ever done, my dear. You will just make them a curtsey and give them a smile, and they will write down their name upon a card." "What! everybody that asks?" cried Lilias, "whether I like them or not?" and her face clouded over. "There will be sure to be some that are disagreeable, and there are some, Katie says, that cannot dance. Will I be obliged to curtsey to them, and smile too? But I will not do it," Lilias said, with a pout. "I do not see the good of going to a ball if it is like that." "It is not just perfection, no more than other things," said Jean; "but most of the young men will, no doubt, be very nice, and you would not like to hurt their feelings." Upon this Lilias pondered for some moments, with a countenance somewhat overcast. "It is always said that a lady has to choose," she said; "but if it is only to say yes whoever asks you----" Jean shook her head. She could not resist the chance of a little moralizing. "My dear," she said, "with the most of women, I'm sorry, sorry to say it, it comes to very little more." Lilias looked at her old sister with keen, unbelieving eyes. She ran over in her mind, in spite of herself, all that is said of old maids in books, and even in such simple talk as she had heard; her mind revolted against it, yet she could not forget it. She wondered in her heart whether this might account for so strange a version of the prerogative of women. She did not believe Jean's report. She raised her fair head in the air with a little fling of pride and power. She was not disposed to give up that stronghold of feminine imagination. A girl must have something to believe in to make her confront with composure the position that is allotted to her. If she is to give up all active power of choice, she must at least have faith that the passive one, the privilege of refusal, is still to be hers. She thought that Jean, in her old maidenhood, in her sense, perhaps, of failure or inacquaintance with the ways of more fortunate women, must be mistaken in her judgment. That she herself, Lilias, should have no greater lot in the world than to sit and smile, and accept whatever might be offered to her, was a conception too humbling. She smiled, not believing it. Jean was good, she was unspotted from the world, but perhaps her very excellence made her slow of understanding. Lilias concluded her thoughts on the subject by giving her old sister a compassionate, caressing look.