Her voice broke in a storm of choking sobs, and her lover caught her to
his breast in a passion of sympathy.

"My own brave darling! How much you have endured, like a patient little
martyr, without complaint! Yet I feel sure it is nothing but your too
vivid imagination. You have heard the silly stories from the servants,
and you dreamed the rest while stolid Sheila Kelly slept on unconscious.
But this must not go on. I shall write to your mother to come to
Ellsworth to stay with you until our wedding; and then, please God, you
will forget, in the shelter of my love, all these nervous fancies."

"Our wedding!" she sobbed, bashfully, against his breast.

"Yes, darling, our wedding; for it must be very soon. I have never told
you yet, love, that by the terms of my father's will I must marry on or
before my twenty-sixth birthday, or forfeit my fortune to my
step-mother."

"What a strange will!" she cried, forgetting her terrors in simple
wonderment.

"Yes; my father had some peculiar notions. One of them was a rooted
belief in the necessity, or expediency, of early marriages; and to
insure my obedience to his wish, he framed his will in the fashion he
did. But he was a good man, and I am not quarreling with his plans; for
I would gladly get married to-day if you were willing, my precious
girl," declared Love, kissing her as a fitting period to his sentence.

Dainty made no answer. She was fluttering with girlish timidity at
thought of the early marriage he was threatening. She said to herself:

"I love him dearly, but I am afraid I shall not like to be married
soon. I have not enough dignity to look like a married lady."

Unconscious of her girlish fears, Love continued, fondly:

"The first day of August is my twenty-sixth birthday, and we must be
married on that day, my darling."

"Oh, I--" she began; but he stopped the objection with a kiss.

"You are going to say you can not get ready so soon; but you need not
make many preparations, love. I want you to wear my mother's
wedding-dress; it is so beautiful--a white brocade, veiled in costly
lace. And we will be married at Ellsworth. That will be better than
going back to the hot city for a wedding--do you not think so? Oh, I
intend to have everything my own way, sweet; and so I shall write to
your mother to-day to come at once to Ellsworth."

"But Aunt Judith--and the girls? They will be fearfully angry," she
whispered, tearfully.

"Yes, they will be very