act was, that Harry Endicott hated Lillie now, with that kind
of hatred which is love turned wrong-side out. He hated her for the
misery she had caused him, and was in some danger of feeling it
incumbent on himself to go to the devil in a wholly unnecessary manner
on that account.

He had read the story of Monte Cristo, with its highly wrought plot of
vengeance, and had determined to avenge himself on the woman who had
so tortured him, and to make her feel, if possible, what he had felt.

So, when he had discovered the hours of driving observed by Mrs.
Follingsbee and Lillie in the park, he took pains, from time to time,
to meet them face to face, and to pass Lillie with an unrecognizing
stare. Then he dashed in among Mrs. Follingsbee's circle, making
himself everywhere talked of, till they were beset on all hands by the
inquiry, "Don't you know young Endicott? why, I should think you would
want to have him visit, here."

After this had been played far enough, he suddenly showed himself one
evening at Mrs. Follingsbee's, and apologized in an off-hand manner
to Lillie, when reminded of passing her in the park, that really he
wasn't thinking of meeting her, and didn't recognize her, she was so
altered; it had been so many years since they had met, &c. All in
a tone of cool and heartless civility, every word of which was a
dagger's thrust not only into her vanity, but into the poor little bit
of a real heart which fashionable life had left to Lillie.

Every evening, after he had gone, came a long, confidential
conversation with Mrs. Follingsbee, in which every word and look
was discussed and turned, and all possible or probable inferences
therefrom reported; after which Lillie often laid a sleepless head
on a hot and tumbled pillow, poor, miserable child! suffering her
punishment, without even the grace to know whence it came, or what it
meant. Hitherto Lillie had been walking only in the limits of that
kind of permitted wickedness, which, although certainly the remotest
thing possible from the Christianity of Christ, finds a great deal of
tolerance and patronage among communicants of the altar. She had lived
a gay, vain, self-pleasing life, with no object or purpose but the
simple one to get each day as much pleasurable enjoyment out of
existence as possible. Mental and physical indolence and inordinate
vanity had been the key-notes of her life. She hated every thing that
required protracted thought, or that made trou