Gustave Lenoble was only too glad to claim his promised wife a little sooner than he had hoped to claim her. "Thou hast put me off long enough, cruel," he said; "and now it is thy father's wish that our marriage should be soon. It shall be this week; I will take no longer thine excuses. We shall be the sooner ready to receive thy friends, thy Charlotte and her Hawkehurst." Diana smiled. "Dear Gustave, you are always kind," she said. It was very sweet to her to think that her new home would afford a pleasant haven for that dear friend who had sheltered her. And with Charlotte, the dear adopted sister, would come the man she had once loved, to share whose cares had once been the brightest dream. She wondered at her own inconstancy on perceiving how completely the dream had flown. Before the stern realities of life--before sickness and sorrow and the dread shadow of death--that schoolgirl's vision had utterly melted away. It is just possible that Gustave's manly outspoken love may have helped to blot from the tablet of her mind the fantastic picture of the life that might have been. She scarcely knew whether this was so; but she did know that a new and happier existence began for her from the hour in which she gave her heart in all truth and loyalty to Gustave Lenoble. The wedding was arranged to take place within a week of Captain Paget's expressly declared wish. It was to be solemnised at a church near Knightsbridge, and again at a Catholic chapel in the neighbourhood of Sloane-street; by which double ceremonial a knot would be tied that no legal quibble could hereafter loosen. Charlotte was just sufficiently recovered to obtain permission to be present at the ceremonial, after some little exercise of her persuasive powers with the medical practitioner to whose care Dr. Jedd had committed her when all danger was past. The Captain protested, with an eager insistence, that the wedding breakfast should be eaten at his domicile. "And Val," he said, "be sure Val is with you. I have a secret to tell him--a kind of atonement to make; some news to give him that he won't quite relish, perhaps. But that's no fault of mine." "No bad news, I hope, papa; for Charlotte's sake as well as for Valentine's." "That depends upon how they both take it. Your friend Charlotte is not particularly fond of money, is she?" "Fond of money, papa? A baby knows as much of the value of money as Lotta. Except to give to beggars in the streets, or to buy pretty frivolous presents for her friends, she has neither use nor desire for money. She is the most generous, most disinterested of created beings." "I'm very glad to hear it," said the Captain, drily. "And how about Hawkehurst, now? Do you think it was a real love-match, his marriage with Miss Halliday? No _arriere pensee_--no looking out for the main chance at the bottom of his romantic attachment, eh, Di?"