ed. "I feel like
shouting it. I can't hold on much longer. I wonder what the old lady
will say!"

Honora disengaged herself from his arms and fled to the screen door. As
she opened it, she turned and smiled back at him.

"Mrs. Holt knows already," she said.

And catching her skirt, she flew quickly up the stairs.

BOOK II. Volume 3.

CHAPTER I. SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE!

It was late November. And as Honora sat at the window of the
drawing-room of the sleeping car, life seemed as fantastic and unreal as
the moss-hung Southern forest into which she stared. She was happy, as
a child is happy who is taken on an excursion into the unknown. The
monotony of existence was at last broken, and riven the circumscribing
walls. Limitless possibilities lay ahead.

The emancipation had not been without its pangs of sorrow, and there
were moments of retrospection--as now. She saw herself on Uncle Tom's
arm, walking up the aisle of the old church. How many Sundays of her
life had she sat watching a shaft of sunlight strike across the stone
pillars of its gothic arches! She saw, in the chancel, tall and grave
and pale, Peter Erwin standing beside the man with the flushed face who
was to be her husband. She heard again the familiar voice of Dr. Ewing
reciting the words of that wonderful introduction. At other weddings she
had been moved. Why was her own so unrealizable?

"Honora, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live
together after God's ordinance in the holy state of Matrimony? Wilt
thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness
and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him,
so long as ye both shall live?"

She had promised. And they were walking out of the church, facing the
great rose window with its blended colours, and the vaults above were
ringing now with the volume of an immortal march.

After that an illogical series of events and pictures passed before
her. She was in a corner of the carriage, her veil raised, gazing at
her husband, who had kissed her passionately. He was there beside her,
looking extremely well in his top hat and frock-coat, with a white
flower in his buttonhole. He was the representative of the future she
had deliberately chosen. And yet, by virtue of the strange ceremony
through which they had passed, he seemed to have changed. In her attempt
to seize upon a reality she looked out of the window. They were ju