“He can’t go and be with her,” said Grace, “without neglecting his business, already too much neglected. Then the house is all in confusion under the hands of painters; and there is that young artist up there,—a very elegant gentleman,—giving orders to right and left, every one of which involves further confusion and deeper expense; for my part, I see no end to it. Poor John has got ‘the Old Man of the Sea’ on his back in the shape of this woman; and I expect she’ll be the ruin of him yet. I can’t want to break up his illusion about her; because, what good will it do? He has married her, and must live with her; and, for Heaven’s sake, let the illusion last while it can! I’m going to draw off, and leave them to each other; there’s no other way.” “You are, Gracie?” “Yes; you see John came to me, all stammering and embarrassment, about this making over of the old place; but I put him at ease at once. ‘The most natural thing in the world, John,’ said I. ‘Of course Lillie has her taste; and it’s her right to have the house arranged to suit it.’ And then I proposed to take all the old family things, and furnish the house that I own on Elm Street, and live there, and let John and Lillie keep house by themselves. You see there is no helping the thing. Married people must be left to themselves; nobody can help them. They must make their own discoveries, fight their own battles, sink or swim, together; and I have determined that not by the winking of an eye will I interfere between them.” “Well, but do you think John wants you to go?” “He feels badly about it; and yet I have convinced him that it’s best. Poor fellow! all these changes are not a bit to his taste. He liked the old place as it was, and the old ways; but John is so unselfish. He has got it in his head that Lillie is very sensitive and peculiar, and that her spirits require all these changes, as well as Newport air.” “Well,” said Letitia, “if a man begins to say A in that line, he must say B.” “Of course,” said Grace; “and also C and D, and so on, down to X, Y, Z. A woman, armed with sick-headaches, nervousness, debility, presentiments, fears, horrors, and all sorts of imaginary and real diseases, has an eternal armory of weapons of subjugation. What can a man do? Can he tell her that she is lying and shamming? Half the time she isn’t; she can actually work herself into about any physical state she chooses. The fortnight before Lillie went to Newport, she really looked pale, and ate next to nothing; and she managed admirably to seem to be trying to keep up, and not to complain,—yet you see how she can go on at Newport.” “It seems a pity John couldn’t understand her.” “My dear, I wouldn’t have him for the world. Whenever he does, he will despise her; and then he will be wretched. For John is no hypocrite, any more than I am. No, I earnestly pray that his soap-bubble may not break.”