y, taking in first
the faultless beauty of her face, and then going away down into the
inmost depths of her character, as if to find out what was there.

"Pure, loving, innocent, and unsuspecting," was Marian Hazelton's
verdict, and she followed wistfully every movement of the young girl as
she flitted around the room, chatting as familiarly with the dressmaker
as if she were a friend long known instead of an entire stranger.

"You look very young to be married," said Miss Hazelton to her once, and
shaking back her short rings of hair Katy answered: "Eighteen next
Fourth of July; but Mr. Cameron is thirty."

"Is he a widower?" was the next question, which Katy answered with a
merry laugh. "Mercy, no! I marry a widower! How funny! I don't believe
he ever cared a fig for anybody but me. I mean to ask him."

"I would," and the pale lips shut tightly together, while a resentful
gleam shot for a moment across Marian's face; but it quickly passed
away, and her smile was as sweet as ever as she at last bade the family
good-night and repaired to the little room where Wilford Cameron once
had slept.

A long time she stood before the glass, brushing her dark, abundant
hair, and intently regarding her own features, while in her eyes there
was a hard, terrible look, from which Katy Lennox would have shrunk
abashed. But that too passed, and the eyes grew soft with tears as she
turned away, and falling on her knees moaned sadly: "I never will--no, I
never will, God help me to keep the promise. Were it the other--Helen--I
might, for she could bear it; but Katy, that child---no, I never will,"
and as the words died on her lips there came struggling up from her
heart a prayer for Katy Lennox's happiness, as fervent and sincere as
any which had ever been made for her since she was betrothed.

They grew to liking each other rapidly, Marian and Katy, the latter of
whom thought her new friend greatly out of place as a dressmaker,
telling her she ought to marry some rich man, calling her Marian
altogether, and questioning her very closely of her previous life. But
Marian only told her that she was born in London; that she learned her
trade on the Isle of Wight, near to the Osborne House, where the royal
family sometimes came, and that she had often seen the present Queen,
thus trying to divert Katy's mind from asking what there was besides
that apprenticeship to the Misses True on the Isle of Wight. Once,
indeed, she went further, lear