She found her eldest sister in their mother's room, where a colored maidservant was engaged in unpacking a case just arrived from New York, and carefully extricating from its interior a rich white dress of velvet and swansdown, garnished with orange blossoms, and which was elaborately folded, with white tissue paper between every surface. "Be careful, Net. The veil must be somewhere there," said Mrs. Force, who was standing over the case, watching the work. "I reckon it is in this square bandbox at the bottom," suggested the woman. "Get it up very carefully, then." Odalite, sitting back in an easy chair, seemed languid and indifferent to what was going on before her. "Is that the wedding dress?" inquired Wynnette, when the elegant structure was laid out at length upon the bed, the train hanging from the foot far down on the carpet. "Yes, that is the wedding dress. What do you think of it? Is it not beautiful?" inquired Mrs. Force, gazing admiringly on the bridal robes. "No! I think it is horrid! Perfectly horrid! I wouldn't wear it if I were Odalite!" exclaimed Wynnette, turning her back on the finery, and going straight up to where her sister sat alone in her sadness. Disregarding the presence of others in the room, the impetuous little lady struck at once into the middle of her subject. "Odalite! It is not true--it cannot be true--that you are going to throw over your own dear true love--our own darling Le, whom we have known all our lives--just to marry that foreign beat, whom nobody knows anything about--I mean that British colonel, who is almost a stranger to us?" Wynnette was terrified at the result of her question. Odalite bent forward, threw her arms around her sister's neck, and burst into a storm of sobs and tears. Mrs. Force wisely forbore to interfere. The colored woman looked on philosophically. She had seen hysterical brides before now. Wynnette clasped her sister close to her bosom, and cried for company. Presently Odalite raised her head, wiped the traces of tears from her face, and taking the hands of her sister, looked earnestly up to her, and speaking more solemnly than she had ever done before, said: "Father and mother have consented that I may. Wynnette, if you love me, never, never speak to me of this again." The little girl kissed her sister in perfect silence, saying to herself: "He has bewitched her--there's where it is! He must have learned magic when he was in India, and he has bewitched her!" A joyful commotion in the hall below, a chorus of voices in glad surprise, and of dogs in eager welcoming barks, attracted the instant attention of all who were present in the room. "Oh, mother! what is it? What is it? Has--has----Oh, mother!" exclaimed Odalite, half rising, then sinking back and grasping the arm of her chair, pale as death.