It was pleasant to know that I was useful to John in those days, for his mother did not interfere in this affair, and he needed a woman's taste to help him.

It was I who selected the colours for Mrs.Hill's drawing-room carpet, I who chose the silk hangings for Miss Leonard's boudoir, I who rearranged in the cabinets the curiosities about which no one but a stray mouse or two had been curious for many years.

I knew well that I did nothing but what any other person could do, yet it pleased me to see how John overrated my services.

It delighted me to hear him praise to his mother my "exquisite taste and skill;" but it pained me to see her anxious look from him to me.

I knew she feared that he was getting to love me well; sometimes with a mixture of fear and joy I thought it myself.