With her hands locked tightly together, her lips firmly compressed and her cheeks of an ashen hue, she was gazing fixedly at the bridegroom, on whom I, too, now looked, starting quickly, for it was our minister, Walter Beaumont! The words were few which made them one, Walter and the young girl at his side, and then the ceremony was over. Cora arose, and leaning heavily upon my arm, went out into the open air, and on through street after street, until her home was reached. Then, without a word, we parted—I going to my room, while she, through the live-long night paced up and down the long parlours where no eye could witness the working of the mighty sorrow which had come upon her. The next morning she was calm, but very, very pale, saying not a word of last night’s adventure. Neither did she speak of it for several days, and then she said, rather abruptly, ‘I would give all I possess if I had never sent that letter. The mortification is harder to bear even than Walter’s loss. But he will not tell of it, I’m sure. He is too good—too noble,’ and tears, the first she had shed since that night, rained through her thin, worn fingers. It came at last—a letter bearing Walter’s superscription, and with trembling hands she opened it, finding, as she had expected, his wedding card, while on a tiny sheet was written, ‘God pity you, Cora, even as I do—Walter.’ ‘Walter! Walter!’ she whispered, and her quivering lips touched once the loved name which she was never heard to breathe again. From that day Cora Douglass faded, and when the autumnal days were come, and the distant hills were bathed in the hazy October light, she died. But not in the noisy city, for she had asked to be taken home, and in the pleasant room where we had often sat together, she had bade me her last good-by. They buried her on the Sabbath, and Walter’s voice was sad and low as with Cora’s coffin at his feet he preached from the words, ‘I am the Resurrection and the life.’ His young wife, too, wept over the early dead, who had well-nigh been her rival, and whose beautiful face wore a calm, peaceful smile, as if she were at rest. There was a will, they said, and in it Walter was generously remembered, while to his wife was given an ivory box, containing Cora’s diamonds—necklace, bracelets, pin and ear-rings—all were there; and Walter, as he looked upon them, drew nearer to him his fair girl-wife, who but for these, might not, perchance, have been to him what she was—his dearest earthly treasure. THE END. MAGGIE LEE.