the increasing talk and laughter all around the table rendered
any tete-a-tete difficult or impossible. And now began the toast
drinking and the speech making. It need not be told how Mr. Rockharrt
toasted the bride, how the chief justice responded in behalf of his late
ward, how Mr. Fabian toasted the bridesmaids, how Mr. Clarence responded
on the part of the young ladies, how with this and that and the other
observance of forms, the breakfast came to an end and the bishop gave
thanks.

The bride retired to change her dress for a traveling suit of navy blue
poplin, with hat and feather to match, and a cashmere wrap. Then came
the leave-taking, and the jubilant bridegroom handed his bride into the
elegant carriage, while his best man, Clarence, gave the last order.

"To the railway station."

This was the final farewell, for Mr. Fabian had asked as a particular
favor that no one of the wedding party should attend them to the depot.
Their luggage had been sent on hours before, in charge of the maid and
the valet. Half an hour's drive brought them to the station in time to
catch the 3:30 train East.

"At last, at last I have you away from all those people and all to
myself!" exulted Fabian, as he seated his wife in the corner of the car,
and turned the opposite seat that they might have no near fellow
passenger. For as yet palace cars were not.

The maid and valet were seated on the opposite side of the car.

The train started.

The speed was swift, yet seemed slow. It was the way train they were on,
and it stopped at every little station. They could not have got an
express before midnight, and that would have been perilous to their
chance of catching the steamer on which their passage to Europe was
engaged.

The journey was made without events until about sunset, when the train
reached the little mountain station of Edenheights, where it stopped
twenty minutes for refreshments.

"What a lovely scene!" said the bride, looking down from the window on
her left, into the depths of a small valley lighted up by the last rays
of the setting sun streaming through the opening between two wooded
hills.

"Yes, dear, lovely, if I can think anything lovely besides yourself," he
replied.

"Look, what a sweet cottage that is almost hidden among the trees. An
elegant cottage of white freestone built after the Grecian order. How
strange, Fabian, to find such a bijou here in this wild, remote
section."

"Probably the res