ed upon realizing how he had been
ignored in the matter by all parties, and thus allowed to rush
headlong into the piece of folly which he had committed, earlier in
the evening, in connection with Edith.

Thus he had held himself aloof from the couple until every one else
had left the parlors, when he mockingly saluted them as already
described.

"No bride?" he repeated, skeptically.

"No, sir. I told you it was simply a farce. I was merely appealed to
to take the place, in the play, of Miss Kerby, who was called home by
telegram," Edith explained.

Mr. Goddard glanced from her to his brother-in-law in unfeigned
perplexity.

"What are you saying?" he demanded. "Do you mean to tell me that you
believe that last act was a farce?--that you do not know that you have
been really and lawfully married to the man beside you?"

"Certainly I have not! What do you mean, sir, by such an unwarrantable
assertion?" spiritedly retorted the young girl, but losing every atom
of color, as a suspicion of the terrible truth flashed through her
mind.

Gerald Goddard turned fiercely upon his brother-in-law at this, for he
also now began to suspect treachery.

"What does she mean?" he cried, sternly. "Has she been led into this
thing blindfolded?"

"I think it would be injudicious to make a scene here," Emil Correlli
replied, in a low tone, but with white lips, as he realized that the
moment which he had so dreaded had come at last.

"What do you mean? Why do you act and speak as if you believed that
mockery to be a reality?" exclaimed Edith, looking from one face to
the other with wildly questioning eyes.

"Edith," began Mr. Goddard, in an impressive tone, "do you not know
that you are this man's wife?--that the ceremony on yonder stage was,
in every essential, a legal one, and performed by the Rev. Mr. ---- of
the ---- church in Boston?"

"No! never! I do not believe it. They never would have dared do such a
dastardly deed!" panted the startled girl, in a voice of horror.

Then drawing her perfect form erect, she turned with a withering
glance to the craven at her side.

"Speak!" she commanded. "Have you dared to play this miserable trick
upon me?"

Emil Correlli quailed beneath the righteous indignation expressed in
her flashing glance; his eyes drooped, and conscious guilt was shown
in his very attitude.

"Forgive me--I loved you so," he stammered, and--she was answered.

She threw out her hands in a gesture of repu