Of course Hester refused point-blank. And then for six months--nay, ten--came awful times for her. Hard times had she seen in that house before, but nothing like these! Horace was banished first. She had to send back her engagement ring, and the letters and the songs I told you of. She had to promise not to meet him in the village, and she kept her promise; not to speak to him if she did meet him there. Then she could not go out anywhere. Then she was kept on bread and water, and the children too. Then there was this and that piece of furniture carried off to be sold at auction,--everything that was her mother's and that her mother prized. Then poor Hester fell sick, and almost died. As soon as she rallied at all, old Bryan began again. And then Hester capitulated. That horrid Duke de Alcantara came--he came after dark, and came in his own carriage all the way from the station at London. Our boys would have mobbed him, I believe. He came, and I am bound to say he behaved very well. He was not obtrusive. He was gentle and gentlemanly. And when he went away he put a ring on Hester's finger; and she did not throw it in his face, nor did she tear out his eyes. And so it was settled. And the house was furnished again, and Betsey Boll and old Miss Tucker came back to work in the kitchen again, and old Bryan's bank account was better than it ever was. And on the 2d of April he went to Cincinnati to sit as V. P. of the C. and T. R. R. Co., and to draw his first quarter's salary. And poor Horace never set his eyes on poor Hester's pale face. And all the village knew that on the 15th of May Hester Bryan was to be married to the Duke de Alcantara. And Lucy Lander surrendered so far from the general tone of opinion of the girls as to agree to be a bridemaid. She had a splendid dress sent to her from St. Louis. Jane Forsyth and the other girls said they would burn at the stake first. But Lucy said--and I think she was right--that Hester had a right to have one friend near her to the last. The wedding was to be at St. Louis at St. Jude's Church. The boys said it was Judas Iscariot's Church, but this was their mistake. They said the Duke de Alcantara was afraid to be married in Hester's home. This, I think, is probable. The arrangements were left mostly to "the Duke" and to old Bryan's sister, Mrs. Goole--a skinny, wiry, disagreeable person, of a very uncertain age, who had made herself so unpleasant to all the neighbors on her visit to her brother, many years ago, that she had never come again till now. Now that he needed some womenfolk, Mrs. Goole was summoned to the rescue. CHAPTER II. SOLD.