"Lily," said Beatrice, "I want you very much. I am sorry to take you from Lionel; you like being with him, I think."
The fair face of her sister flushed warmly.
"But I want you, dear," said Beatrice. "Oh, Lily, I am in bitter trouble! No one can help me but you."
They went together into the little boudoir Beatrice called her own. She placed her sister in the easy lounging chair drawn near the window, and then half knelt, half sat at her feet.
"I am in such trouble, Lily!" she cried. "Think how great it is when I know not how to tell you."
The sweet, gentle eyes looked wonderingly into her own. Beatrice clasped her sister's hands.
"You must not judge me harshly," she said, "I am not good like you, Lily; I never could be patient and gentle like you. Do you remember, long ago, at Knutsford, how I found you one morning upon the cliffs, and told you that I hated my life? I did hate it, Lillian," she continued. "You can never tell how much; its quiet monotony was killing me. I have done wrong; but surely they are to blame who made my life what it was then—who shut me out from the world, instead of giving me my rightful share of its pleasures. I can not tell you what I did, Lily."
She laid her beautiful, sad face on her sister's hands. Lillian bent over her, and whispered how dearly she loved her, and how she would do anything to help her.
"That very morning," she said, never raising her eyes to her sister's face—"that morning, Lily, I met a stranger—a gentleman he seemed to me—and he watched me with admiring eyes. I met him again, and he spoke to me. He walked by my side through the long meadows, and told me strange stories of foreign lands he had visited—such stories! I forgot that he was a stranger, and talked to him as I am talking to you now. I met him again and again. Nay, do not turn from me; I shall die if you shrink away."
The gentle arms clasped her more closely.