incredulity.
For the moment Nelly's mask--a transparent one enough at best--with
which she faced the world was down. No happy girl had ever spoken so,
looked so. And it wanted only a few weeks to her marriage!

Mary, no more logical than women less intellectual than she, felt as her
first impulse a coldness, chilling her heart that had been so warm
towards the girl Robin Drummond had chosen. The chill must have reached
Nelly's delicate apprehension, for she looked up in a startled way.

"Robin promised me your friendship," she began.

"And, to be sure, it is yours," Mary Gray said, still wondering at the
inexplicable thing that Robin Drummond's promised wife could have secret
cause for unhappiness. She had no further inclination to caress the girl
for whom she had been passed by. "We are going to be great friends," she
said with a cold sweetness.

Then the kettle boiled over and created a diversion. While Mary was
still mopping up the pool it had made on the floor Sir Robin returned.
His voyage of discovery had not been in vain. He had indeed chartered a
hansom to make it, and had brought back fascinating things in the way of
cream and tea-cakes and other dainties. As he came in he glanced at the
two whom he hoped to see friends. A shadow rested on Nelly's face. He
saw nothing amiss with Mary Gray as she went to and fro, busy with the
little meal, and had no fault to find with her words as they parted.

"We are going to be great friends, Miss Drummond and I," she said.

But the note of the nightingale that leans his breast on the thorn, the
note of self-sacrifice and yearning tenderness had gone out of her
voice.

CHAPTER XXII

LIGHT ON THE WAY

It wanted three weeks to her wedding when one day Nelly suddenly came
upon Mrs. Rooke in one of the narrow, fashionable streets south of
Oxford Street. Mrs. Rooke was coming out of a florist's shop, and she
was carrying a sheaf of lilies in her hand. For one second she looked as
though she would have turned aside and avoided Nelly. Then she came
straight on with a little unfriendly uplifting of her white chin.

She might have passed with a bow if Nelly had not stopped straight in
her path.

"How d'ye do?" she said coldly. "What a delightful day! I had no idea
you were back. But to be sure ... I must congratulate you. It is next
month, is it not?"

"Yes; it is next month," Nelly said with stiff lips. "The twenty-third
of July, to be accurate. I have wondere