But, after all, John managed to be proud of her. When he read in the columns of “The Herald” the account of the Splandangerous ball in Newport, and of the entrancingly beautiful Mrs. J. S., who appeared in a radiant dress of silvery gauze made _à la nuage_, &c., &c., John was rather pleased than otherwise. Lillie danced till daylight,—it showed that she must be getting back her strength,—and she was voted the belle of the scene. Who wouldn’t take the comfort that is to be got in any thing? John owned this fashionable meteor,—why shouldn’t he rejoice in it? Two years ago, had anybody told him that one day he should have a wife that told fibs, and painted, and smoked cigarettes, and danced all night at Newport, and yet that he should love her, and be proud of her, he would have said, Is thy servant a dog? He was then a considerate, thoughtful John, serious and careful in his life-plans; and the wife that was to be his companion was something celestial. But so it is. By degrees, we accommodate ourselves to the actual and existing. To all intents and purposes, for us it is the inevitable. CHAPTER XII. _HOME À LA POMPADOUR._ WELL, Lillie came back at last; and John conducted her over the transformed Seymour mansion, where literally old things had passed away, and all things become new. There was not a relic of the past. The house was furbished and resplendent—it was gilded—it was frescoed—it was _à la_ Pompadour, and _à la_ Louis Quinze and Louis Quatorze, and _à la_ every thing Frenchy and pretty, and gay and glistening. For, though the parlors at first were the only apartments contemplated in this _renaissance_, yet it came to pass that the parlors, when all tricked out, cast such invidious reflections on the chambers that the chambers felt themselves old and rubbishy, and prayed and stretched out hands of imploration to have something done for _them_! So the spare chamber was first included in the glorification programme; but, when the spare chamber was once made into a Pompadour pavilion, it so flouted and despised the other old-fashioned Yankee chambers, that they were ready to die with envy; and, in short, there was no way to produce a sense of artistic unity, peace, and quietness, but to do the whole thing over, which was done triumphantly. The French Emperor, Louis Napoleon, who was a shrewd sort of a man in his day and way, used to talk a great deal about the “logic of events;” which language, being interpreted, my dear gentlemen, means a good deal in domestic life. It means, for instance, that when you drive the first nail, or tear down the first board, in the way of alteration of an old house, you will have to make over every room and corner in it, and pay as much again for it as if you built a new one.