icance, certainly; still there was a strong
feeling of jealousy in her heart as she remembered that little wooden
cross he would be obliged to pass. Would he stop there? She could not
tell.

"How I love him--and how foolish I am!" she laughed, nervously. "I
have no rival, yet I am jealous of his very thoughts, lest they dwell
on any one else but myself. I do not see how it is," she said,
thoughtfully, to herself, "why people laugh at love, and think it
weakness or a girl's sentimental folly. Why, it is the strongest of
human passions!"

She heard people speak of her approaching marriage as "a grand
match"--she heard him spoken of as a wealthy Southerner, and she
laughed a proud, happy, rippling laugh. She was marrying Rex for love;
she had given him the deepest, truest love of her heart.

Around a bend in the terrace she heard approaching footsteps and the
rippling of girlish laughter.

"I can not have five minutes to myself to think," she said to herself,
drawing hastily back behind the thick screen of leaves until they
should pass. She did not feel in the humor just then to listen to Miss
Raynor's chatter or pretty Grace Alden's gossip.

"Of course every one has a right to their own opinion," Grace was
saying, with a toss of her pretty nut-brown curls, "and I, for one, do
not believe he cares for her one whit."

"It is certainly very strange," responded Miss Raynor, thoughtfully.
"Every one can see she is certainly in love with Rex; but I am afraid
it is quite a one-sided affair."

"Yes," said Grace, laughing shyly, "a _very_ one-sided affair. Why,
have you ever noticed them together--how Pluma watches his face and
seems to live on his smiles? And as for Rex, he always seems to be
looking over her head into the distance, as though he saw something
there far more interesting than the face of his bride-to-be. That
doesn't look much like love or a contented lover."

"If you had seen him this morning you might well say he did not look
contented," replied Miss Raynor, mysteriously. "I was out for a
morning ramble, and, feeling a little tired, I sat down on a
moss-covered stone to rest. Hearing the approaching clatter of a
horse's hoofs, I looked up and saw Rex Lyon coming leisurely down the
road. I could not tell you what prompted me to do it, but I drew
quietly back behind the overhanging alder branches that skirted the
brook, admiring him all unseen."

"Oh, dear!" cried Grace, merrily, "this is almost too goo