never shall be able to compare Bittra, like
so many other brides, to the sleeping child that Carafola has painted,
with an angel holding over it a crown of thorns, and whom marriage, like
the angel, would awake by pressing the thorns on her brow."

"God forbid!" I said fervently. How little I dreamed of the troubles
that were looming up out of the immediate future to shroud her marriage
sunshine in awful gloom!

As the marriage procession passed the door where Alice lived, Bittra
gave a little timid, imperious command to her admirers to stop. She and
Ormsby alighted and passed into the cottage. The orange blossoms touched
the crown of thorns on the head of the sick girl; but, somehow, both
felt that there was need of a sisterhood of suffering on the one part to
knit their souls together. Ormsby remained in the kitchen, talking to
Mrs. Moylan; and from that day forward she was secured, at least, from
all dread of dependence or poverty forevermore.

At the breakfast table it was, of course, my privilege to propose the
health of the bride and bridegroom, which I most gladly did; and, let me
say, so successfully as to bring back unwonted smiles to Campion's face,
who now freely forgave me for the _gaucheries_ at the marriage service.
Then the guests strolled around, looking at the marriage presents--the
usual filigree and useless things that are flung at the poor bride.
Bittra took me into a little boudoir of her own to show me her _real_
presents.

"Father," she said, "who is a great artist, wanted me to give back all
this rubbish, as he calls it; but I would much rather sacrifice all that
_bijouterie_ outside." And she exhibited with glistening eyes the bridal
offerings of the poor fisherwomen and country folk of Kilronan. They
were fearfully and wonderfully made. Here was a magnificent three-decker
battleship, complete from pennant to bowsprit, every rope in its place,
and the brass muzzles of its gun protruded for action. Here was a pretty
portrait of Bittra herself, painted by a Japanese artist from a
photograph, surreptitiously obtained, and which had been sent 15,000
miles across the ocean for an enlarged replica. Here were shells of all
sizes and fantastic forms, gathered during generations, from the vast
museums of the deep. Here was a massive gold ring, with a superb ruby,
picked up, the Lord knows how, by a young sailor in the East Indian
Islands. Here, screaming like a fury, was a paroquet, gorgeous as a
ra