now I am going
to do just like everybody else. It's rather sneaky.'

'What is?' he asked. 'To be a good woman?'

'Oh, you are not philosophical,' she said. 'And me--me too. My brain,
what there was of it, is clean gone; my heart has got complete mastery.
It is really ludicrous that my highest ambition, and my highest
delight, should be to be able to say "I love you," and to go on saying
it any number of times. But then, dear Frank, when all this nonsense
is over between us, then we will set to work and try and do some good.
There must be something for us to do in the world.'

'Oh yes, no doubt,' he said, 'and do you know when I think this
nonsense will be over between you and me, Nan?--when you and I are
lying dead together in Kingscourt churchyard.'

She touched his hand with her hand--for a moment.

'And perhaps not even then, Frank.'

* * * * * *

Well, it was a double wedding, after all; and Mr. Roberts was
determined that it should be memorable in Brighton, if music, and
flowers, and public charities would serve. Then Mr. and Mrs. Jack
Hanbury were to come along from Southampton; and Mr. Jacomb had, in the
most frank and manly fashion, himself asked permission to assist at the
marriage ceremony. There were, of course, many presents; two of which
were especially grateful to Nan. The first was a dragon-fly in rubies
and diamonds, the box enclosing which was wrapped round by a sheet of
note-paper really belonging to Her Majesty, and hailing from Whitehall.
These were the words scrawled on the sheet of paper:--

'_This is for the wedding of the BEAUTIFUL WRETCH, who has now
completed the list of her atrocities by jilting her oldest
sweetheart.--G. S._'

The second present that was particularly prized by Nan carries us on to
the wedding-day. It was one of the clearest of clear June days; a
fresh southerly wind tempering the heat; there was scarcely a cloud in
the blue. How these rumours get about it is impossible to say; but a
good many people seemed to have discovered that there was to be a
double wedding; and there was an unusual crowd about the entrance to
the church and along both sides of the roofed portico. Among these
people was one who attracted a little mild polite curiosity. She was a
country-looking, fresh-complexioned young woman, who was smartly
dressed and trim as to ribbons and such things; and she held in her
hand a basket of fairly good size and of f