Not a shade of these internal reflections was visible in her manner.

She said, "Oh, how sweet! How perfectly charming! How splendid!" in all proper places; and John was delighted.
She also fell into the arms of Grace, and kissed her with effusion; and John saw the sisterly union, which he had anticipated, auspiciously commencing.
The only trouble in Grace's mind was from a terrible sort of clairvoyance that seems to beset very sincere people, and makes them sensitive to the presence of any thing unreal or untrue.

Fair and soft and caressing as the new sister was, and determined as Grace was to believe in her, and trust her, and like her,--she found an invisible, chilly barrier between her heart and Lillie.

She scolded herself, and, in the effort to confide, became unnaturally demonstrative, and said and did more than was her wont to show affection; and yet, to her own mortification, she found herself, after all, seeming to herself to be hypocritical, and professing more than she felt.
As to the fair Lillie, who, as we have remarked, was no fool, she took the measure of her new sister with that instinctive knowledge of character which is the essence of womanhood.

Lillie was not in love with John, because that was an experience she was not capable of.
But she had married him, and now considered him as her property, her subject,--_hers_, with an intensity of ownership that should shut out all former proprietors.
We have heard much talk, of late, concerning the husband's ownership of the wife.