CHAPTER XII.
ELLEN FINDS A REMEDY.
When Emma had gone Ellen settled herself comfortably in a garden chair, sighed, and began to fan her face with a newspaper which lay at hand. Her mind was agitated, for it had become obvious to her that the position was full of complications, which at present her well-meant efforts had increased rather than diminished.
“I only hope that I may be forgiven for all the white lies I have been forced to tell this morning,” she reflected. Ellen did not consider her various embellishments of the truth as deserving of any harsher name, since it seemed to her not too sensitive conscience, that if Jove laughs at lovers’ perjuries, he must dismiss with a casual smile the prevarications of those who wish to help other people to become lovers.
Still Ellen felt agg
