"It must be very nice to have one's self so perfectly in command as you have.

And yet I don't know.

I think it would be rather nice too to find one's self suddenly under the power of some one a great deal better and stronger and wiser than one's self, who compelled one to love him, not because one would, but just because one could not help it." The girls were alone in the sitting-room, Mrs.Lane having gone out to a neighbor's, taking Olly with her, and Miss Lydia not having yet appeared for her usual hour downstairs.

It was a few days after the picnic, and was one of those suddenly cool August evenings that sometimes drop down so unexpectedly upon the summer heat, and a wood-fire lay upon the hearth ready to light at the invalid's coming.

Phebe too sprang from the sofa as she spoke, as if her words had evoked too vivid a picture, and kneeling down by the hearth, applied a match.