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“DEAR ELLEN:–Will you come to the ball to-night? I have not seen Alice yet. I am on the rack, in excruciating torture. Your family and your husband don’t fancy me, but you have known me from childhood. You ought to show mercy, rather than cruelty. Will you come?

FREDERICK ORTON.”

Nellie had read the letter, drowned in tears. How would she have felt, if her family had been so unjustly prejudiced against Theodore? Wouldn’t she have expected some help from dear sister Alice? And shouldn’t she help Alice in her extremity, even if Theodore should be vexed a little about it? Why did Theodore hate Fred Orton? He never said so; but she knew he didn’t like him. Nellie wrote to Mr. Orton:

“POOR, DEAR FRED:–I’ll come to the ball and speak with you, if I can. I’ll always be your friend, even if my own flesh and blood don’t do you justice. If you only knew how good father and mother really are, and that they have heard wrong stories about you, you wouldn’t mind it. Your devoted sister

ELLEN.”

Nellie, dressed in white, looked like a veritable little angel, and went to the ball with Mr. and Mrs. Williams. She spoke with Fred, danced with him, took a letter for Alice, and told him how her precious sister was almost dying of a broken heart. Then, thinking she had spoken rather strongly, she added: “You know she feels so some of the time.” When Fred came the second time to ask Nellie to dance, she thought his motion was slightly wavering. She attributed it to the agitation of his heart on hearing about Alice, and he led her out on the floor. His breath was tinctured with brandy. Nellie grew white, and begged him to take her back to her seat. He laughingly, but positively refused. “Good gracious!” she mentally ejaculated, “I shall die with shame to be dancing with a drunken man, and Theodore not here! I never should have believed the stories about Fred, if I hadn’t been convinced with my own eyes and nose. Oh! what will Theodore say to me? Oh! if I had only done as he advised. If I had stayed at home–oh! I am so sorry I came! Shall I ever be able to tell Theodore? Suppose it should make trouble between us. Oh! I know now that I am such a miserable, wilful, perverse mortal. I was born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward!” Nellie besought Mr. Williams to convey her home, the instant her agonizing dance was over. He did so. She entered the parlour with beating heart, with green veil on her head, with crape shawl thrown around her pretty figure. Theodore sat there.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands with a start, and then standing as motionless as if she had been shot. Theodore glared at her with a pale face, set lips, and flashing eyes. She said, with quivering lip, “I shall die, if you are going to look at me that way long! Oh, dear! I’m so miserable! I’m always getting my own head snapt off to accommodate other people.”

“You have not injured yourself by accommodating me!” responded a deep, ferocious voice.

“It wasn’t for my own gratification that I went, Theodore.”

“For whose gratification was it, madam?”–There was a shade less of ferocity in the tone.

“For my sister’s!”

“Why didn’t you tell me why you wanted to go, madam?”

“It was a secret between Alice and me; and I rather thought you liked me, and I might impose on you, as I used to do on the girls at school that liked me. I don’t mean impose,”–(Mr. Grenly fairly banged at the fire,)–“I mean–“

“What do you mean, Ellen Grenly?”

“I thought I could do just as I wished, and you’d make up just as the girls used to do.”

You thought your husband was like a girl, did you–did you?”