f expression and of voice, followed her
from room to room, as though Lucy had indeed, as Jenny said, been dying
upstairs instead of waiting to be married. And all the time, while she
arranged the supper tray and attended to the making of the coffee so
that it might be perfect, she was thinking, "Mother must have felt like
this when I was married and I never knew it, I never suspected." She saw
her little bedroom at the rectory, with her own figure, in the floating
tulle veil, reflected in the mirror, and her mother's face, that face
from which all remembrance of self seemed to have vanished, looking at
her over the bride's bouquet of white roses. If only she had told her
then that she understood! If only she had ever really understood until
to-night! If only it was not too late to turn back now and gather that
plaintive figure, waiting with the white roses, into her arms!

The next morning she was up at daybreak, finishing the packing,
preparing the house before leaving for church, making the final
arrangements for the wedding breakfast. When at last Lucy, with reddened
eyes and tightly curled hair, appeared in the pantry while her mother
was helping to wash a belated supply of glass and china which had
arrived from the caterer's, Virginia felt that the parting was worse
even than Harry's going to college.

"Mother, I've the greatest mind on earth not to do it."

"My pet, what is the matter?"

"I can't imagine why I ever thought I wanted to marry! I don't want to
do it a bit. I don't want to go away and leave you and father. And,
mother, I really don't believe that I love him!"

It was so like Lucy after months of cool determination, of perfect
assurance, of stubborn resistance to opposition--it was so exactly like
her to break down when it was too late and to begin to question whether
she really wanted her own way after she had won it. And it was so like
Virginia that at the first sign of weakness in her child she should grow
suddenly strong and efficient.

"My darling, it is only nervousness. You will be better as soon as you
begin to dress. Come upstairs and I will fix you a dose of aromatic
ammonia."

"Do you really think it's too late to stop it?"

"Not if you feel you are going to regret it, but you must be very sure
that it isn't merely a mood, Lucy."

At the first sign that the step was not yet irrevocable, the girl's
courage returned.

"Well, I suppose I'll have to get married now," she said, "but i