he will love to drive those pretty fillies! He was
always so fond of horses."

Philip knocked on her door. His voice said, "I am ready now."

It had been her idea to send him for Jacques alone, so that father and
son might have a little time together before they came to her. She
opened to him and stood, a white-clad vision, framed in the doorway of
that dreary bridal suite.

"You see, I am ready too," she said, blushing a little. "Do you like my
dress, Philip?"

He stared at her without speaking. His eyes were heavy and rimmed with
shadow. For Philip, too, the night had been long.

She asked again rather anxiously, "Do I look nice, Philip? It doesn't
seem too--young for me, this white?" She was in need of all her vanity
just then. The mirror had shown her a face pale and luminous, not less
beautiful--she knew that--but far older than the face whose memory
Jacques carried with him into prison. She was obsessed by the fear that
he would not recognize her.

But for once Philip's comforting admiration failed her. "I don't know
how you look," he muttered, and turned abruptly away.

She stared after him in surprise. "Dear Phil--he must be very much upset
to speak to me like that!" she thought.

She went into the parlor, and busied herself arranging flowers she had
ordered to make the place less cheerless for the little wedding. The
proprietress came in presently with more flowers, a box bearing the card
of James Thorpe. The woman was in a flutter of excitement.

"They's two reporters in the office already, _Mrs. Kildare_," she said,
emphasizing the name, "and more on the way, I reckon. If I'd 'a guessed
who you were, I'd 'a' had a weddin'-cake baked, I surely would. I've
been on your side from the very first!"

"Thank you," said Kate, wearily.

"We've often had folks stayin' here to meet a friend who was comin'
out,"--she jerked a significant thumb over her shoulder toward the
penitentiary--"but never any one so famous, and never a weddin' right at
the very gate, so to speak," she added unctuously.

Kate winced. She had registered under a false name, hoping thus to
escape notoriety. Now she saw the folly of any such hope. From the
first, no detail of her unfortunate romance had escaped notoriety.

"Let the reporters come up," she sighed. "Perhaps if I speak to them now
they will let us alone afterwards."

She was speaking to them, when she heard in the street outside the
familiar, crisp trot of the colts fro