"While Adele was dressing me for dinner--" she began.

At that name, he moved so that her arm dropped from his; but she did not
connect her maid with her former bosom friend.

"I got to thinking about those who are not so well off as we," she went
on; "about the poor. And so, I've asked papa to give all his employees
and the servants nice presents, and I've sent five thousand dollars to be
divided among the churches in the town, down there--for the poor. Do you
think I did wrong? I'm always afraid of encouraging those kind of people
to expect too much of us."

She had asked that he might echo the eulogies she had been bestowing
upon herself. But he disappointed her. "Oh, I guess it was well
enough," he replied. "I must go down to the pavilion. I'm fagged, and
you must be, too."

The suggestion that he might not be looking his best on the morrow was
enough to change the current of her thoughts. "Yes, _do_, dear!" she
urged. "And don't let Tom and Harry and the rest keep you up."

They did not even see him. He sat in the shed at the end of the
boat-landing, staring out over the lake until the moon set. Then he went
to the pavilion. It was all dark; he stole in, and to bed, but not to
sleep. Before his closed but seeing eyes floated a vision of two
women--Adelaide as he had last seen her, Theresa as she looked in the
mornings, as she had looked that afternoon.

He was haggard next day. But it was becoming to him, gave the
finishing touch to his customary bored, distinguished air; and he
was dressed in a way that made every man there envy him. As Theresa, on
insignificant-looking little Bill Howland's arm, advanced to meet him at
the altar erected under a canopy of silk and flowers in the bower of
lilies and roses into which the big drawing-room had been transformed,
she thrilled with pride. _There_ was a man one could look at with
delight, as one said, "My husband!"

It was a perfect day--perfect weather, everything going forward without
hitch, everybody looking his and her best, and "Mama" providentially
compelled by one of her "spells" to keep to her room. Those absences of
hers were so frequent and so much the matter of course that no one gave
them a second thought. Theresa had studied up the customs at fashionable
English and French weddings, and had combined the most aristocratic
features of both. Perhaps the most successful feature was when she and
Ross, dressed for the going away, walked, she leaning upon hi