Roy returned from Oakwood earlier than usual, reporting Georgie better, and telling of a burglary which had been committed the previous night, at a house up the mountain-road. Nothing of value was taken, he said; but it showed that thieves were around, and he charged Russell to be very careful in securing the house. “I would not like to suffer again, as we did in New York,” he said; and then he told Edna how, years ago, his house in New York had been entered, and a quantity of plate and jewelry carried off, notwithstanding that Russell grappled with the thief in the lower hall, and gave him a black eye, by which he was afterward identified and brought to justice. “He must have been a very ingenious villain,” he said, “as, after he was tried, and found guilty, and sentenced to the penitentiary, he managed to break out of prison, and is still at large, and for aught I know, is the very scamp who robbed the house last night.” Edna was not cowardly, and forgot all about Roy’s burglar until the next day, when Georgie came over to Leighton, and the story was told again by Mrs. Churchill, who had been a little timid the previous night, and thought, once or twice, that she heard something around the house. Georgie was interested, and excited, and frightened. “We had a burglar in our house once,” she said; “and since then I cannot even hear the word without its setting every nerve to quivering.” “Then let’s talk of something pleasanter,—those trunks, for instance, which I saw in the express office this morning, and which must have contained the wedding finery, eh?” Roy said, playfully. His allusion to the “wedding finery” was a fortunate one, and diverted Georgie’s thoughts from burglars to the beautiful dresses which had that morning come up from New York for herself and Maude, whose trousseau was purchased by Mr. Burton himself, and was to be scarcely less elegant than that of Georgie. Edna was to be one of the bridesmaids, and Mrs. Churchill was having her dress made in the house, and taking as much pride in it as if Edna had been her daughter. And Edna tried hard to be happy, and sometimes made herself believe that she was, though a sense of loneliness and pain would steal over her whenever she saw Roy riding down the avenue, and knew where he was going, and that soon it would be a sin for her to watch him thus. Charlie’s grave was visited oftener now, and the girlish widow tried to get up a sentimental kind of sorrow for the dead, and to think that her heart was buried with him, knowing all the while that a hundred living Charlies could not make up for that something she craved so terribly.