"Hush, Margaret! hush, my dear! you are excited, and so am I. Don't say anything you may wish afterwards that you had not. God bless you, and make you a happy woman, and a good wife; but don't begin your married life with a--" Mrs. Parke choked down the word with a great sob, and hastily left the room. It was high noon, and she had not yet put on her own array. Margaret stood stiff and blind with horror. Had she really known, then? Had her hand been bought? Then she remembered her own innocence when she told her love. Not so proudly, not so freely, not so gladly, could it ever have been told to the millionaire's son. A rush of self-pity came over her, softening the indignant throbbing of her heart, and opening the fountains of tears. She was at the point where a woman must have a good cry, or go mad,--but where could she give way? Not here, where anyone might come in. Indeed, there was Winnie's voice at the door of the nursery, eager to show her bridesmaid's toilette. Margaret snatched up two white shawls which lay ready on the sofa, caught up the heavy train of her gown in one hand, and flew down the front staircase like a hunted swan, through the library to the sacred room beyond--her father's study, now, as she well knew, deserted, while its owner was above, reluctantly dressing for the festivity. She pushed the only chair forward to the table, threw one shawl over it, and laying the other on the table itself, sat down, and carefully bending her head down over her folded arms, so as not to crush her veil by a feather's touch, let loose the flood-gates. In a moment she was crying as only a healthy girl who seldom cries can, when she once gives up to it. Someone spoke to her; she never heard it. Someone touched her; she never felt it. It was only when a voice repeated, "Why, Margaret, dearest, what is the matter?" that she checked herself with a mighty effort, swallowed her sobs, and still holding her handkerchief over her tear-stained cheeks and quivering mouth, turned round to find herself face to face with her bridegroom, who having stopped to take up his best man, Alick Parke, was waiting till that young man tied his sixth necktie. She well knew that a lover who finds his betrothed crying her eyes out half an hour before the wedding has a prescriptive right to be both angry and jealous; but he looked neither; only a little anxious and troubled. "Darling, has anything happened?" "No--not exactly; that is--O Al! they won't believe me!" "They! who?" "Not one single one of them. Not mother, even mother! I thought she would--but she doesn't." "Does not what?" "She does not believe," said Margaret, trying to steady her voice, "that when you asked me to marry you, and I said I would, that I did not know you were rich. I told her, but she won't believe me." "Well," said Mr. Smith, quietly, though with a little flush on his face; "it's very natural. I don't blame her."