“And you were not impatient?” “I was too ill for that, you know.” “Poor Frank! How you must have suffered! I hope you were not vexed that I did not come to see you. But they told me you were looking so frightfully ill I had not the heart lest I should scold you, for, after all, everything was your own fault, you know, going to that girl’s funeral.” “Do not let us bring that subject up again, Cora. I only did what I thought was my duty.” “Duty! That kept you from your own wedding!” she cried reproachfully. “Only for that we should be married now.” “We can be married to-morrow if you are willing, Cora.” “Nonsense! How could we? All the arrangements will have to be made over again. And my maid of honor is out of town--gone South for a month.” “You can choose another!” “But she made me promise to wait her return!” “I do not think that is at all necessary. Choose some other girl and let us have the agony over!” abstractedly. “The agony! Sir?” and Cora Ellyson almost transfixed him with the indignant flash of her great, dark eyes. He started, realizing he had made a blunder. “Dear Cora, I beg your pardon, I did not mean to wound you. Do you not understand my impatient mood? That it is agony to me, this waiting to call you mine,” anxiously. “Dear Frank, was that what you meant? I thought for a moment that--that--but, no, it would be impossible you should look on our marriage as a bore!” “Impossible!” he echoed fervently, but in the bottom of his heart he was terribly distressed at his own indifference, he who had once loved Cora to madness. He would not have had her find out the cruel truth for the world. He played his part as a true lover still with amiable deceit, thinking anxiously: “This is but a caprice of illness. Love will come back.” Alas! Would Love his ruined quarters recognize Where shrouded pictures of the past remain, And gently turn them with forgiving eyes If Love should come again? Cora was charmed with the belief in his anxiety for the wedding. She thought that absence had, indeed, taught him her value. With pretty coquetry she pretended coyness in naming another wedding day just to make him plead for haste. Understanding what was expected of him, he continued to insist, until she named a day just two weeks distant. “And it shall be a home wedding this time. I could not bear to go to church again after--that day! Oh, I knew it was ill-fated when we met that horrible funeral! I wish I had turned back then and so escaped the next cruel hour--the waiting, the anxiety, the curious faces, some sympathetic, some sarcastic--the sinking at the heart, the bitter resentment, believing myself jilted at the altar! Ah, Frank, there are times when I feel as if I can never forgive you for the humiliation of that hour!” cried Cora, in passionate excitement. He took her burning hands and kissed them fondly, crying: “I will make it all up to you, my darling, when I am your husband, by the most patient devotion!”