r resting in her room. "I
am worn out, Ruth," was her first remark. "I am going to bed for three
or four days. It was a dreadful ordeal."

"One to which you may have to submit."

"Certainly not. My marriage will be a religious ceremony, with half a
dozen of my nearest relatives as witnesses."

"I noticed Fred slip away before Dora went. He looked ill."

"I dare say he is ill--and no wonder. Good night, Ruth. I am going to
sleep. Tell father all about the wedding. I don't want to hear it named
again--not as long as I live."

CHAPTER VI

THREE days passed and Ethel had regained her health and spirits, but
Fred Mostyn had not called since the wedding. Ruth thought some inquiry
ought to be made, and Judge Rawdon called at the Holland House. There
he was told that Mr. Mostyn had not been well, and the young man's
countenance painfully confessed the same thing.

"My dear Fred, why did you not send us word you were ill?" asked the
Judge.

"I had fever, sir, and I feared it might be typhoid. Nothing of the
kind, however. I shall be all right in a day or two."

The truth was far from typhoid, and Fred knew it. He had left the
wedding breakfast because he had reached the limit of his endurance.
Words, stinging as whips, burned like hot coals in his mouth, and he
felt that he could not restrain them much longer. Hastening to his
hotel, he locked himself in his rooms, and passed the night in a frenzy
of passion. The very remembrance of the bridegroom's confident transport
put mur-der in his heart--murder which he could only practice by his
wishes, impotent to compass their desires.

"I wish the fellow shot! I wish him hanged! I would kill him twenty
times in twenty different ways! And Dora! Dora! Dora! What did she see
in him? What could she see? Love her? He knows nothing of love--such
love as tortures me." Backwards and forwards he paced the floor to such
imprecations and ejaculations as welled up from the whirlpool of rage in
his heart, hour following hour, till in the blackness of his misery he
could no longer speak. His brain had become stupefied by the iteration
of inevitable loss, and so refused any longer to voice a woe beyond
remedy. Then he stood still and called will and reason to council him.
"This way madness lies," he thought. "I must be quiet--I must sleep--I
must forget."

But it was not until the third day that a dismal, sullen stillness
succeeded the storm of rage and grief, and he awoke from a s