come," he said, stiffly, for jealousy made his
heart sore.

"Why?"

The innocent wondering eyes met his for a
moment, then drooped as she held out her left
hand, and showed the third finger slightly swelled
and reddened round the wedding-ring.

"This is it," she whispered. "You know
you made me promise to take it off before
to-morrow, and I tried. But look; my finger has
swollen round it quite suddenly, and do what I
will I cannot move it. I am very silly, Philip,
but I could not help crying. Is it not a bad
omen?"

"An omen very quickly put an end to," said
Mr. Denbigh, producing from his pocket a case
of uncomfortable-looking instruments. "I will
nip it off for you in a moment."

But Elsie held back her hand.

"No, Philip," she said, pleadingly, "please
let me keep it on, till to-morrow. If it does not
come off easily before we go to church, you shall
take it off for me then; but I can't quite say good-
bye to the old life till I begin the new one."

There was a pause; then Philip took her
hands almost roughly, and held her from him
while he looked searchingly in her face. It
blushed under his gaze, though again the eyes
were raised fearlessly and wondering.

"Elsie," he said, in a hoarse voice, "if your
heart is gone down into the grave with that
other man, say so. Do not let me give all and
get nothing."

"Oh! have you been fancying that I was
fretting?" Elsie exclaimed. In a lower tone, and
as if her own words almost frightened her, she
went on: "Could you think so, Philip? Don't
you understand that I am only sorry, and
grieved, and angry with myself because I do
not feel as I ought? Yes, you were right in
what you said; that was a child's love, and
this is the real grown-up love; and now this
about my ring seemed like reproach."

"You are making me much happier than I
can express," was all her lover could answer.

"And I hope—I do hope—my feelings are
not wronging his memory," she whispered on.
"I did care: you know I did. But, oh! not
as I care for you."

She looked up at him with such a look of trust
and affection as those sweet eyes had never
given him before. Doubts and fears vanished,
and for once his restless passionate heart was
at peace.

Elsie Clavering had spoken the truth in the
avowal she had just made. Her sailor lover,
gay, buoyant, and rather shallow, had been too
like herself in temperament to command the
reverence with which Philip Denbigh had
inspired her. The days of her first short bright
wooing had passed by, stirring only the surface
of her nature, and leaving its depths to be
fathomed in a later hour.

"She is happy, she is really and truly happy
now!" thought her lover, as he walked home
through the darkness of the foggy January night.
"She will be a thousand times happier than
that poor fellow ever could have made her.
Fate has been good to us both. She would
have been utterly thrown away on poor empty-
headed Clavering, whose sailor admiration of
beauty was just stirred by her pretty face, but
who would have liked any other well-looking
girl just as much as my pearl, my darling, the
only woman in the whole world to me! I have
won her at last—at last—after all these years!
Only this one night more to be lived through,
and to-morrow—to-morrow!"

An early hour had been fixed for the
marriage, in order that it might be as quiet as
possible; it was hardly nine o'clock, when
Mrs. Carter, almost the only invited guest,
arrived at the church, and took her place in the
vicarage pew. It was a raw black morning,
with a biting wind threatening snow. The
vicar's wife was shivering under all her wraps,
and half sobbing besides, for she had a keen
feeling that the eternal fitness of things, and,
above all, the dignity of womanhood, were
outraged by the purpose for which she had come
there; and that Elsie Clavering, by all the rules
of feminine propriety, was bound rather to have
died of a broken heart.

"Oh! if John were to die, would I ever,
ever forget him?" thought the warm-hearted
little woman. She was in the midst of a doleful,
and yet rather soothing, vision of her own
inconsolable conduct at John's funeral, when a
sound in the porch made her turn her head, and
she saw the bridegroom entering. But such a
bridegroom! Philip Denbigh was at all times
pale; but the white, set, ghastly face of the
man then entering the porch was as unlike the
Philip Denbigh of yesterday as a stiffened corpse
is unlike the living breathing creature. Mrs.
Carter was absolutely terror-stricken.

"Good God, this man is going mad!" was
the thought which flashed across her. Next
moment she smiled at her own fears, when she
saw that the doctor's manner was quite
collected. But old Isott, who, in her cherry-
coloured merino and white ribbons, was
standing close by, never took her eyes off
her master. And she observed what Mrs.
Carter did not, that—when he tried to pass the
time in turning over the leaves of a prayer-
book, his hand so shook that he was obliged to
put it down, and that all the while he stood
with folded arms awaiting his bride, he was
gnawing his under lip. But he was ready
in a moment to take his place before the
altar when Elsie arrived, leaning on the arm
of a kind old gentleman of the neighbourhood,
who had undertaken to act as father for
the occasion. She had chosen a very quiet
dowager garb: a dress of silver grey silk, which
fell about her in soft rich folds, under the
long white burnous; and a few green orange-
leaves in her small white bonnet prevented her
dress from being half mourning. But she could
not have chosen any dress which would have set
off to greater advantage her childish feminine
Beauty.

"Surely," thought Mrs. Carter, "she must