own sex to stand near her. We arranged for a general meeting at the
dinner.

In the carriage she said, "I brought you away because I am devoured
with uneasiness. Mrs. Ashburleigh wrote me that she would certainly
be here for at least the principal part of the ceremony. I do not know
what to make of it. It may be of no use, but we will scour the city.
These throngs, this noise, make me uneasy. I fear some accident,
having," she added with a smile, "one lone woman's sympathy for
another lone woman."

[Illustration: DIVERS DIVERSIONS.]

I peered through the crowds at this, right and left, with
inexpressible emotion. Perhaps this accidental sort of quest was that
which destiny had arranged for the solution of my life-problem. To
light upon Mary Ashburleigh in these festal throngs, perhaps wanting
assistance, perhaps calling upon my name even now through her velvet
lips, was a chance the mere notion of which made my blood leap.

When Brussels gives herself over to holiday-making, she does it in
a whole-souled and self-consistent way that has plenty of
attractiveness. The houses seemed to have turned themselves inside
out to replenish the streets. People in their best clothes, equipages,
processions, bands, troops of children, filled the avenues. Some
conjecture that there might have been a mistake about the church took
us to the cathedral of St. Gudule. Here, amid the superb spectrums of
the stained windows, we searched through the vari-colored throngs that
covered the floor, but no familiar face looked upon us. Strange to
us as the old, impassive monumental dukes of Brabant who occupy the