"A week!" exclaimed her aunt. "You surely did not consent to that?" "No," Aunt Rose, "but I believe I half consented to try to make my preparations in two weeks. I doubt if we can quite settle that question now." "There must be time allowed for furnishing you with a handsome trousseau, my dear child," Elsie said, "but possibly it can be accomplished in a fortnight. As to the next question--where?--you surely will let it be here, in my house?" "Gladly, cousin, if pleasing to you," Molly answered with a grateful, loving look. "And Mr. Keith shall officiate, if he will. Of course it must be a very quiet affair; I should prefer that under any circumstances." "You will invite Dick, will you not?" her uncle asked with a twinkle in his eye. "Dick! oh the dear fellow! I ought to have him. I wonder if I could persuade him to leave his practice long enough to come. Two weeks would give him time to get here if I write at once." "No need," her uncle replied. "Providence permitting, he will be here in less than half that time." Then the whole story came out in answer to Molly's look of astonished inquiry, and her cup of happiness was indeed full to overflowing. "Where did you drive, Molly?" asked Isa. "But I suppose you hardly know; you could see nothing but--your companion?" "Ah, Isa, do you judge of me by yourself?" queried Molly gleefully. "By the way, though, I had three companions. But _don't_ I know where I went?" Then smiling, laughing, blushing, rosy and happy as they had never seen her before, she described the darling baby girls and the beautiful home. But the sweet words of love that had been as music to her ear were too sacred for any other. She had quite a large and certainly very attentive and interested audience, the whole family having gathered in the room. Enna and the young girls were especially delighted with the tale she had to tell. "It's just like a story--the very nicest kind of a story!" cried Vi, clapping her hands in an ecstasy of delight when Molly came to that part of her narrative where she learned that she herself was to be the mistress of the lordly mansion she had entered as a stranger visitor, with all its wealth of luxury and beauty. The next two or three weeks were full of pleasant bustle and excitement, preparations for the wedding being pushed forward with all possible dispatch, Mr. Embury pleading his loneliness and that he wanted Molly's relatives and friends to see her fairly settled in her new home before they left Viamede for the North. Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore, with Enna, Isa, the younger Elsie and Violet, took a trip to New Orleans and spent several days in shopping there, laying in great store of rich, costly and beautiful things for Molly's adornment. Mr. Embury, too, paid a flying visit to the city, which resulted in an elegant set of jewels for his bride and some new articles of furniture for her apartments.