It is a peculiarity of Grace's constitution or temperament that she can never keep still under the pressure of excitement or trouble. She is always in a quiver, and even when sitting down she is always rocking or tapping her foot, or perhaps it is only in the convulsive pressure of her pearly teeth on her red lips that she betrays inward unrest. I cannot give any psychological nor physical reason for this. I only know that it is so, and Lulu had found out this characteristic of Grace long ago. "Darling," she says, coming into the room, swinging her broad straw hat by its blue ribbons. "Darling, what is it that troubles you?--anything new?" "Anything new?" Mrs. Winans laughs, provokingly. "Lulu, dearest, is there anything new under the sun?" "I am certain the sun never shone on anything before as rare as yourself," Lulu answers, with winning affection, lifting the small, half-gloved hand to her tender lips. Mrs. Winans pulls it away, and dashes it across eyes that look suspiciously misty and dark. "Don't, Lulu, you silly child! You are always making me cry." "And I wish I could," she answers. "I am tired of this surface gayety, my liege lady. Oh, I am going to talk plainly! You don't mean it--I know how you suffer, Grace, darling, bravely as you repress it, and I know, too, that you would feel better if you let it all blow over in a great passionate storm--rain! But you won't. You have been living the last few months in a whirl of gayety and pretended pleasure, and damming up the fountain of feeling, till now it is breaking over all your frail barriers of pride and scorn, and you will not give it way, and it is bearing you on its current--where, oh! dearest, where?" "Hush!" came in a stifled moan, from behind the hands that hid the girlish wife's convulsed face. "You shall not talk so--I cannot bear it!" "But I must, love," and Lulu's arm stole around the convulsed form that still held itself proudly erect, as if disdaining human help and sympathy. "I must, and you will forgive poor Lulu, for it is her duty, and I must be less your devoted friend than I am if I did not speak. Oh, you know you are not taking the right course to procure oblivion of your sad and grievous troubles! It does not make you happy to whirl through the thoughtless rounds of society amusements and pleasures; it does not make you happy nor contented to dazzle men's eyes and hearts with your inaccessible beauty, when seas are rolling between you and the only man in whose eyes you care to seem fair. Darling, I know when you go back to your silent home your heart sinks heavier by the contrast; I know that when you lay this lovely head upon its pillow you recall, with agony, the time when your baby's cheek was pillowed there against your own----"