once alone, sat down and
did nothing; and was called before she had taken off her bonnet.

'I'm coming,' she cried, jumping up, and speedily disapparelling herself,
brushed her hair with a few touches and went down.

Two or three of Mr. Heddegan's and her father's friends had dropped in,
and expressed their sympathy for the delay she had been subjected to. The
meal was a most merry one except to Baptista. She had desired privacy,
and there was none; and to break the news was already a greater
difficulty than it had been at first. Everything around her, animate and
inanimate, great and small, insisted that she had come home to be
married; and she could not get a chance to say nay.

One or two people sang songs, as overtures to the melody of the morrow,
till at length bedtime came, and they all withdrew, her mother having
retired a little earlier. When Baptista found herself again alone in her
bedroom the case stood as before: she had come home with much to say, and
she had said nothing.

It was now growing clear even to herself that Charles being dead, she had
not determination sufficient within her to break tidings which, had he
been alive, would have imperatively announced themselves. And thus with
the stroke of midnight came the turning of the scale; her story should
remain untold. It was not that upon the whole she thought it best not to
attempt to tell it; but that she could not undertake so explosive a
matter. To stop the wedding now would cause a convulsion in Giant's Town
little short of volcanic. Weakened, tired, and terrified as she had been
by the day's adventures, she could not make herself the author of such a
catastrophe. But how refuse Heddegan without telling? It really seemed
to her as if her marriage with Mr. Heddegan were about to take place as
if nothing had intervened.

Morning came. The events of the previous days were cut off from her
present existence by scene and sentiment more completely than ever.
Charles Stow had grown to be a special being of whom, owing to his
character, she entertained rather fearful than loving memory. Baptista
could hear when she awoke that her parents were already moving about
downstairs. But she did not rise till her mother's rather rough voice
resounded up the staircase as it had done on the preceding evening.

'Baptista! Come, time to be stirring! The man will be here, by heaven's
blessing, in three-quarters of an hour. He has looked in already fo