r distance, she heard herself
telling her father that all was well with her and she had spent an
enjoyable evening.

Then she lay back in the car with clenched hands, and listened trembling
to the thundering wheels of Destiny.

CHAPTER XV

THE SAPPHIRE FOR FRIENDSHIP

No girl ever worked harder in preparation for her own wedding than did
Dinah on the following day.

That she had scarcely slept all night was a fact that no one suspected.
Work-a-day Dinah, as her father was wont to call her, was not an object
of great solicitude to any in her home-circle, and for the first time in
her life she was thankful that such was the case.

Her mother's hard gipsy eyes watched only for delinquencies, and her
rating tongue was actually a relief to Dinah after the dread solitude of
those long hours. She was like a prisoner awaiting execution, and even
that harsh companionship was in a measure helpful to her.

The time passed with appalling swiftness. When the luncheon hour arrived
she was horrified to find that the morning had gone. She could eat
nothing, a fact which raised a jeering laugh from her mother and a
chaffing remonstrance from her father. Billy had gone riding on Rupert
and had not returned. Billy always came and went exactly as he pleased.

One or two more presents from friends of her father's had arrived by the
midday post. Mrs. Bathurst unpacked them, admiring them with more than a
touch of envy, assuring Dinah that she was a very lucky girl, luckier
than she deserved to be; but Dinah, though she acquiesced, had no heart
for presents. She could only see--as she had seen all through the
night--the piteous, marred face of a woman who had passed through such an
intensity of suffering as she could only dimly guess at into the dark of
utter despair. She could only hear, whichever way she turned, the
clanking of the chains that in so brief a time were to be welded
irrevocably about herself.

Luncheon over, she went up to dress and to finish the packing of the new
trunks which were to accompany her upon her honeymoon. She had not even
yet begun to realize these strange belongings of hers. She could no
longer visualize herself as a bride. She looked upon all the finery as
destined for another, possibly Rose de Vigne, but emphatically not for
herself.

The wedding-dress and veil lying in their box, swathed in tissue-paper,
had a gossamer unreality about them that even the sense of touch could
not dispel. No