t as she had read
they would do when she met the right one. That was how she had known
Rex was the right one when she had shyly glanced up, from under her
long eyelashes, into the gay, brown hazel eyes, fixed upon her so
quizzically, as he took the heavy basket from her slender arms, that
never-to-be-forgotten June day, beneath the blossoming magnolia-tree.

Poor child! her life had been a sad romance since then. How strange it
was she was fleeing from the young husband whom she had married and
was so quickly parted from!

All this trouble had come about because she had so courageously
rescued her letter from Mme. Whitney.

"If he had not bound me to secrecy, I could have have cried out before
the whole world I was his wife," she thought.

A burning flush rose to her face as she thought how cruelly he had
suspected her, this poor little child-bride who had never known one
wrong or sinful thought in her pure, innocent young life.

If he had only given her the chance of explaining how she had happened
to be there with Stanwick; if they had taken her back she must have
confessed about the letter and who Rex was and what he was to her.

Even Stanwick's persecution found an excuse in her innocent,
unsuspecting little heart.

"He sought to save me from being taken back when he called me his
wife," she thought. "He believed I was free to woo and win, because I
dared not tell him I was Rex's wife." Yet the thought of Stanwick
always brought a shudder to her pure young mind. She could not
understand why he would have resorted to such desperate means to gain
an unwilling bride.

"Not yet seventeen. Ah, what a sad love-story hers had been. How
cruelly love's young dream had been blighted," she told herself; and
yet she would not have exchanged that one thrilling, ecstatic moment
of rapture when Rex had clasped her in his arms and whispered: "My
darling wife," for a whole lifetime of calm happiness with any one
else.

On and on she walked through the violet-studded grass, thinking--thinking.
Strange fancies came thronging to her overwrought brain. She pushed her
veil back from her face and leaned against the trunk of a tree; her brain
was dizzy and her thoughts were confused; the very stars seemed dancing
riotously in the blue sky above her, and the branches of the trees were
whispering strange fancies. Suddenly a horseman, riding a coal-black
charger, came cantering swiftly up the long avenue of trees. He saw the
quiet