stood
there, and here presently Georgiana unrolled her breadths of silk and
laid upon them the pattern she had selected.

And now, indeed, she was glad of the long training in the dressmaker's
trade, glad of the clever art she had cultivated for so many years. It
was to her a simple enough matter to fashion herself a dress which
should be in form and line all that could be desired. To do it out of
unbroken yards of material, without necessity for piecing and patching,
was a delightful novelty. To accomplish it in three days was only a
matter of working at top speed, with fingers which flew at the behest of
a brain which also worked like magic at its task.

During this period Doctor Craig himself was more than ordinarily busy,
to judge by his infrequent appearances at his home. For those last three
days before his marriage he was out of town, returning only on the
evening preceding the date set. But Georgiana found no lack in him as a
lover, for during the brief moments when he could be with her he made
the most of his opportunity, letting her see plainly that she was always
in his thoughts, and giving her every evidence that he was the happiest
of expectant bridegrooms. Each day a great box of flowers was brought to
her, in which she revelled as she had only dreamed of doing. While he
was away he called her up each evening on the telephone, managing to
send her somehow, over the wire, a sense of his nearness and his
devotion. Altogether those few days brought to Georgiana an experience
unique in a lifetime, and one which she would gladly have prolonged.

Then, it seemed quite suddenly, it was Wednesday morning, and the sun
was shining brilliantly in at Georgiana's windows over a thousand
roof-tops. The marriage was to occur at noon, because, for a bride whose
bridal finery was limited to a little frock of dark blue silk and whose
traveling attire was the plainest of ready-to-wear suits and simplest of
small hats, without furs or furbelows of any sort, it seemed the only
fitting hour.

It had been arranged that the two essential witnesses to the ceremony
should be two close friends of Doctor Craig's, an elderly couple whose
name, if the Warnes had known, was one of the old names of the city,
standing for the bluest of blue Knickerbocker blood, though for only
moderate wealth and for no ostentation whatever. Georgiana had begged
that no other guests be asked, being anxious, on her father's account,
to have the whole