endent of her
own life in its hideous swiftness. Idle or busy, it was all the same. The
days would not linger for her; the dreaded 10th was close at hand.

Frank Randall was still in London, in that solicitor's office--a firm of
some standing in the City--to which he had gone on leaving his father. He
had written two or three times to Ellen since he left Hampshire, and she
had answered his letters secretly; but pleasant though it was to her to
hear from him, she begged him not to write, as her father's anger would
be extreme if a letter should by any evil chance fall into his hands. So
within the last few months there had been no tidings of Ellen's absent
lover, and the girl was glad that it was so. What could she have said to
him if she had been compelled to tell him of her engagement to Stephen
Whitelaw? What excuse could she have made for marrying a man about whom
she had been wont to express herself to Frank Randall in most unequivocal
terms? Excuse there was none, since she could not betray her father. It
was better, therefore, that young Randall should hear of her marriage in
the common course of things, and that he should think of her just as
badly as he pleased. This was only one more poisoned drop in a cup that
was all bitterness.

"He will believe that I was a hypocrite at heart always," the unhappy
girl said to herself, "and that I value Stephen Whitelaw's money more
than his true heart--that I can marry a man I despise and dislike for the
sake of being rich. What can he think worse of me than that? and how can
he help thinking that? He knows that I have a good spirit of my own, and
that my father could not make me do anything against my will. He will
never believe that this marriage has been all my father's doing."

The wedding morning came at last, bright and spring-like, with a sun that
shone as gaily as if it had been lighting the happiest union that was
ever recorded in the hymeneal register. There were the first rare
primroses gleaming star-like amidst the early greenery of high grassy
banks in solitary lanes about Crosber, and here and there the tender blue
of a violet. It would have seemed a very fair morning upon which to
begin the first page in the mystic volume of a new life, if Ellen Carley
had been going to marry a man she loved; but no hapless condemned wretch
who ever woke to see the sun shining upon the day of his execution could
have been more profoundly wretched than the bailiff's daughter,