He drew her hand through his arm, and carefully conducted her to the waiting carriage. How long her school companions remained outside the door of the recreation room, clamoring to come in; or when their patience became exhausted; or how they affected an entrance; or whether they gave the alarm; or who first discovered her flight, Alberta never knew and never cared. Her lover placed her in a carriage and drove her immediately to the dwelling of a clergyman, where, with the special license Vittorio had taken care to provide, they were married; for in the District of Columbia there is no law to prevent a minor marrying, without the consent of parents or guardians, at any hour. From the house of the officiating clergyman they went to a hotel, where they remained until the next morning, when they took the boat to Richmond. You see Vittorio Corsoni, with all his faults, did not shrink from facing his father-in-law. In the Italian’s creed, love was law, and in his inmost soul he was unconscious of having done a great wrong. But there was no chance of Vittorio’s meeting Mr. Goldsborough in Richmond just then. The very boat upon which the newly-married pair embarked, and which had reached the Washington wharf late on the evening before, had brought up Alberta’s father on a visit to herself. As it was too late for him to see his daughter that night, and as the hotels were almost uncomfortably crowded, the old gentleman decided to quarter himself upon his good friend, the retired Lutheran minister. It seemed that Erminie had been booked for surprises that day, and that the tribe of cousins or friends as numerous as a Scotch clan, of which her father had jestingly spoken, were really beginning to pour in. She had scarcely curtsied Vittorio Corsoni out, before a cab rolled up to the door and her two uncles, Hans and Friedrich Rosenthal, got out of it. Hans had suddenly come from Germany the day before, and they had both come on to see their brother Ernest, the retired Lutheran minister. Erminie welcomed them with the warmest affection, and showed them into a spare room, where she hastened to have a fire lighted, and to make them comfortable; and then she dispatched Catharine to the Congress Library to look for her father and tell him of the arrival of his brothers, so that he might hurry home. The old Lutheran minister came with the messenger, his face beaming with joy, and embraced his brothers warmly in his earnest German manner. Colonel Eastworth did not appear until the six o’clock dinner, when he was introduced to the strangers. He was, as often now, moody and preoccupied; but even he could not long resist the influence of that cordial spirit of love which seemed to pervade the Lutheran minister’s family.