en Windward and Hemlock mountains. It brought up to her the
taste of black birch, the formidably clean smell of yellow soap, and
the rush of summer wind past her ears.

CHAPTER XXXIII

"WHOM GOD HATH JOINED ..."

They were to sail on the 23d, and ever since the big square invitation
had come it had been a foregone conclusion, conceded with no need
for wounding words, that there was no way out of attending the
Sommerville-Morrison wedding on the 21st. They kept, of course, no
constrained silence about it. Aunt Victoria detested the awkwardness
of not mentioning difficult subjects as heartily as she did the
mention of them; and as the tree toad evolves a skin to answer his
needs, she had evolved a method all her own of turning her back
squarely on both horns of a dilemma. No, there was no silence about
the wedding, only about the possibility that it might be an ordeal, or
that the ordeal might be avoided. It could not be avoided. There was
nothing to be said on that point. But there was much talk, during the
few days of their stay in New York, about the elaborate preparations
for the ceremony. Morrison, who came to see them in their temporary
quarters, kept up a somewhat satirical report as to the magnificence
of the performance, and on the one occasion when they went to see
Molly they found her flushed, excited, utterly inconsecutive,
distracted by a million details, and accepting the situation as the
normal one for a bride-to-be. There were heart-searchings as to
toilets to match the grandeur of the occasion; and later satisfaction
with the moss-green chiffon for Sylvia and violet-colored velvet for
her aunt. There were consultations about the present Aunt Victoria
was to send from them both, a wonderfully expensive, newly patented,
leather traveling-case for a car, guaranteed to hold less to the
square inch and pound than any other similar, heavy, gold-mounted
contrivance. Mrs. Marshall-Smith told Morrison frankly, in this
connection, that she had tried to select a present which Molly herself
would enjoy.

"Am I not to have a present myself?" asked Morrison. "Something that
you selected expressly for me?"

"No," said Sylvia, dropping the sugar into his tea with deliberation.
"You are not to have any present for yourself."

She was guiltily conscious that she was thinking of a certain scene in
"The Golden Bowl," a scene in which a wedding present figures largely;
and when, a moment later, he said, "I hav