It took all the strength that she possessed, however, to go through the ordeal of those hours with Ethel. She managed to keep away until nearly nine o'clock on Monday night, and then--just after her father had gone out--she received a peremptory little note from Ethel. "Why don't you come? You said you would come almost directly after dinner, and it is ever so late now. Oliver has just left me: he has business in the city, so I shall not see him again until to-morrow. Do come at once, or I shall begin to feel lonely." So Lesley went. She had to look at the wedding-cake, the wedding-gown, the simple little breakfast table. She sat up with Ethel until two in the morning, helping her to pack up her things, and listening to her praises of Oliver. That was the worst of it. Ethel _would_ talk of Oliver, _would_ descant on his perfections, and, above all, on his love for her. It was very natural talk on Ethel's part, but it was indescribably painful and humiliating to Lesley. Every moment of silence seemed to her like an implicit lie, and yet she could not bring herself to destroy the fine edifice of her friend's hopes, although she knew she could bring it down to the ground with a touch--a word. "And I am so glad there is not to be a fuss," Ethel said at last, when St. Pancras' clock was striking two: "for I always thought that a fussy wedding would be horrid. You see, Lesley, I have dressed up so often in white satin and lace, as a bride, or a girl in a ballroom, or some other character not my own, that I feel now as if there would be no reality for me in a wedding if I did not wear rather every-day clothes. In a bride's conventional dress, I should only fancy myself on the stage again." "You don't call the dress you are to wear to-morrow 'every-day clothes,' do you?" said Lesley, with a smiling glance towards the lovely gown in which Ethel had elected to be married, and then to wear during the first part of her wedding-journey. "I call it just a nice, pretty frock--nothing else," said Ethel, complacently, "one that I can pay calls in afterwards. But I could not refuse the lovely lace Maurice insisted on giving me: so I shall wear a veil instead of a bonnet--it is the only concession I make to conventionality." "I wish you would go to sleep, Ethel: you will look very pale under your veil to-morrow." "Well, I will try; but I don't feel like it. I hope Maurice will be back in good time. It was very tiresome of that patient of his to send for him in such a hurry." Then there was a silence, for both girls were growing sleepy; and it was with a yawn that Ethel at last inquired-- "Lesley, why won't your father come to my wedding?" "Won't he?" said Lesley, with a little start. "Not he: I asked him again on Saturday, and he refused." "Perhaps," said Lesley, not very steadily, "it gives him pain to be present at a wedding: he speaks sometimes--as if he did not like to hear of them."