nd, scarcely breathing,
until Dorothy passed slowly into an inner apartment, and she was
heartily glad that she touched her bell a moment after.

Katy hurried to her with alacrity, taking pains, however, to tiptoe to
the door, open it, and close it again, quite as if she had just come in
from the corridor.

"Now, Katy," said her young mistress, "you must make haste to help me
dress. I am impatient. I feel dreadfully nervous, as though a great
calamity was to take place. I feel just such a strange sensation as
seemed to clutch at my heart before that terrible accident happened that
has blighted my whole life."

"Oh, dear Miss Dorothy, _please_ don't talk so!" cried Katy, aghast.
"I'm sure it isn't right, if I may make so bold as to say so to you. I
have always heard it said: 'Never cross a bridge of trouble until you
come to it.'"

"'Coming events cast their shadows before,'" quoted Dorothy, slowly.

"I have made your dress look so lovely, Miss Dorothy," she cried,
bravely attempting to turn her thoughts into another channel, "and it's
right sorry I am that you can't see it. Every one will say that it is
the prettiest dress at the ball. You said I might fix it any way that I
liked, so long as it looked grand."

"How have you arranged it, Katy?" asked Dorothy, with a faint smile,
being girl enough to forget her sorrow for an instant in speaking of her
ball dress.

"It is your new white tulle, miss, that I picked out--the one that you
had made to go to parties in, providing you were ever asked to any, the
first week you came to Gray Gables, you remember."

"Oh, yes," murmured Dorothy, clasping her little hands. "I--I remember
so well how nice it looked on me, too."

"You looked like an angel in it!" declared Katy; resuming: "Well, it's
that one, miss, and I have been embroidering flowers all over the front
of it as a surprise for you, and, oh, they look perfectly magnificent on
it!--just as though some one stood near you and threw a great handful
of blossoms over you and they clung to your white tulle dress just where
they fell."

"What kind of flowers are they?" asked Dorothy, delightedly.

"Wisteria blossoms," said Katy.

Dorothy sprang to her feet, pale as death.

"You have embroidered purple wisteria blossoms all over my ball dress?"
she whispered, in an awful voice.

"Yes," returned the girl, wondering what was coming next.

"Oh, Katy!" she cried, in a choking voice, "don't you know that purple
wis