he said, sweetly. "Lesley is a dear girl, and
thoroughly good and loving. I am quite sure you could not have a better
friend, and she will be delighted to do anything she can for you."

"I don't know about that," said Ethel, with a little pout. "I had a
great deal of trouble to get her to promise to come. She made all sorts
of excuses--one would have thought that she did not want to see me
married at all."

Which, Rosalind thought, might be very true. She had so strong a faith
in the power of her brother's fascinations that she could not believe
that he had actually "made love," as he had threatened, to Lesley Brooke
without success.

Ethel spoke truly when she said that she had had great difficulty in
persuading Lesley to come. After what had passed between herself and
Oliver, Lesley felt herself a traitress in Ethel's presence. It seemed
to her at first impossible to talk to Ethel about her pretty wedding
gifts, her trousseau and her wedding tour, or to listen while she
swore fidelity to Oliver Trent, when she knew what she did know
concerning the bridegroom's faith and honor. On the Sunday after the
Brookes' evening party she had a very severe headache, and sent word to
Ethel that she could not possibly come to her on the morrow. But Ethel
immediately came over to see her, and poured forth questions,
consolations, and laments in such profusion that Lesley, half blind and
dazed, was fain to get rid of her by promising again that nothing should
keep her away. And on Monday the headache had gone, and she had no
excuse. It was not in Lesley's nature to simulate: she could not pretend
that she had an illness when she was perfectly well. There was
absolutely no reason that she could give either to the Kenyons or to
Miss Brooke for not keeping her promise to sleep at Ethel's house on the
Monday night, and be present at her wedding on Tuesday morning.

So she wound herself up to make the best it. It seemed to her that no
girl had ever been placed in so painful a position before. We, who have
more experience of life than Lesley had, know better than that. Lesley's
position was painful indeed, but it might in many ways have been worse.
But she, ignorant of real life, more ignorant even than most girls,
because she knew so few of the pictures of real life that are to be
found in the best kind of novels, had nothing but her native instincts
of truth and courage to fall back upon, together with the strong will
and power of ju