When she descended, every ray of color had gone out of her face--it
was white and passionless as stone; but she kissed the children all
around, gave a little present to Isabella, who had been her only
bridesmaid, shook hands and said a word or two of thanks to honest
James Ferguson, her "father" for the day, and then found herself driving
through the familiar streets--not alone. She never would be alone any
more.

With a shudder, a sense of dread indescribable, she remembered this.
All her innocent, solitary, dreamy days quite over, her happiness.
vanished; her regrets become a crime. The responsibility of being no
longer her own, but another's--bound fixedly and irrevocably by the
most solemn vow that can be given or taken, subject to no limitations.
provisions, or exception while life remained. Oh. it was awful--awful!

She could have shrieked and leaped out of the carriage, to run wildly
anywhere--to the world's end--when she felt her hand taken, softly but
firmly.

"My dear, how cold you are! Let me make you warm if I can."

And then, in his own quiet, tender way, Dr. Grey wrapped her up in her
shawl and rolled a rug about her feet. She took no notice, submitted
passively, and neither spoke a word more till they had driven on for
two or three miles, into a country road leading to a village where
Avonsbridge people sometimes went for summer lodgings.

Christian knew it well. There, just before her father's death, he and she
had lived, for four delicious, miserable, momentous weeks. She had
never seen the place since, but now she recognized it--every tree, every