“Poor girl, how cruelly she must have suffered in the terrible suspense of that hour. I must make it up to her, Noel, as soon as I can. Perhaps it would please her to be married now before I get well.” “Now? Here?”--in surprise. “Yes; why not? Loving each other so well, what does the time and place matter if it is a true union of hearts? It would stop silly gossip over the interrupted wedding, and such a proof of my tenderness would perhaps condone my offense in showing respect to Mrs. Dalrymple by attending her daughter’s obsequies.” There was a slight touch of bitterness in the last words that Noel did not understand, and he said, in his brusque way: “Not many girls would care to be married by a sick bed and sacrifice all the fol-lalas of a brilliant wedding.” “But Cora would because she loves me very fondly. Will you go and see her for me, Noel, and ask her if she would be willing to marry me to-morrow, so that we can start on our wedding tour as soon as I am well enough?” Noel went, and the patient, tired by his long talk, dozed again, and filled up the interval of time this way till his friend’s return. He wakened at last with a start at a light touch on his arm. “Ah, Noel, is that you? Where have you been so long? Ah, I remember now! You saw Cora? She will grant my wish?” “You are mistaken, old boy. She--refuses!” CHAPTER XIX. THE NEW WINE OF LOVE. Cora Ellyson had, indeed, refused her lover’s request. Ernest Noel had gauged her quite correctly in asserting that she would be unwilling to be married simply, without the pomp and ceremony so dear to the feminine mind. And, besides, though pained over her lover’s accident, she could not forgive in her heart the first cause of it. She argued to herself that if he had not gone to the funeral he would not have been forced to the haste that had resulted so disastrously to himself and caused her so cruel a mortification. “Whoever heard of anything so outré as a man’s going to a funeral in his wedding suit, and on the eve of his marriage?” She cried to herself in a passion of jealous anger, hating poor Jessie for the sympathy he had shown and the few thoughts she had taken from the proud bride who had claimed all. Despite her love for him, Cora longed to punish her lover for his fealty to Jessie’s memory. She did not consider that he had already suffered enough. She desired his punishment to come through her, the chosen of his heart. If any one had told her that the fire of his love that had burned so fiercely until that day in the park had cooled down into an indifference that he would not own even to his own heart, she could not have believed it. They had had their lovers’ quarrels before, flirted with others before, kissed and made up always. She expected things to go as usual.