fingers in
salute with distant, stiff phrases belonging to a grown-up world. Not one
of them save Mary Ann dared recognize their former bond of playmates. Mary
Ann leaned down and whispered with a giggle: "Say, you didn't need to envy
Kate, did you? My! Ain't you in clover! Say, Marsh," wistfully, "do invite
me fer a visit sometime, won't you?"

Now Mary Ann was not quite on a par with the Schuylers socially, and had
it not been for a distant mutual relative she would not have been asked to
the wedding. Marcia never liked her very much, but now, with the
uncertain, dim future it seemed pleasant and home-like to think of a visit
from Mary Ann and she nodded and said childishly: "Sometime, Mary Ann, if
I can."

Mary Ann squeezed her hand, kissed her, blushed and giggled herself out of
the way of the next comer.

They went out to the dining room and sat around the long table. It was
Marcia's timid hand that cut the bridecake, and all the room full watched
her. Seeing the pretty color come and go in her excited cheeks, they
wondered that they had never noticed before how beautiful Marcia was
growing. A handsome couple they would make! And they looked from Marcia to
David and back again, wondering and trying to fathom the mystery.

It was gradually stealing about the company, the truth about Kate and
Captain Leavenworth. The minister had told it in his sad and gentle way.
Just the facts. No gossip. Naturally every one was bristling with
questions, but not much could be got from the minister.

"I really do not know," he would say in his courteous, old-worldly way,
and few dared ask further. Perhaps the minister, wise by reason of much
experience, had taken care to ask as few questions as possible himself,
and not to know too much before undertaking this task for his old friend
the Squire.

And so Kate's marriage went into the annals of the village, at least so
far as that morning was concerned, quietly, and with little exclamation
before the family. The Squire and his wife controlled their faces
wonderfully. There was an austerity about the Squire as he talked with his
friends that was new to his pleasant face, but Madam conversed with her
usual placid self-poise, and never gave cause for conjecture as to her
true feelings.

There were some who dared to offer their surprised condolences. To such
the stepmother replied that of course the outcome of events had been a
sore trial to the Squire, and all of them, but they