Marcia shuddered at her father’s agony. She could not bear it longer. With a soft cry she went to him, and nestled her head against his breast unnoticed. “Father, father, don’t!” she cried. But her father went on without seeming to see her. “To be disgraced and deserted and dishonored by my own child! Something must be done. Send the servants! Let the wedding be stopped!” He looked at Madam and she started toward the door to carry out his bidding, but he recalled her immediately. “No, stay!” he cried. “It is too late to stop them all. Let them come. Let them be told! Let the disgrace rest upon the one to whom it belongs!” Madam stopped in consternation! A wedding without a bride! Yet she knew it was a serious thing to try to dispute with her husband in that mood. She paused to consider. “Oh, father!” exclaimed Marcia, “we couldn’t! Think of David.” Her words seemed to touch the right chord, for he turned toward the young man, intense, tender pity in his face. “Yes, David! We are forgetting David! We must do all we can to make it easier for you. You will be wanting to get away from us as quickly as possible. How can we manage it for you? And where will you go? You will not want to go home just yet?” He paused, a new agony of the knowledge of David’s part coming to him. “No, I cannot go home,” said David hopelessly, a look of keen pain darting across his face, “for the house will be all ready for her, and the table set. The friends will be coming in, and we are invited to dinner and tea everywhere. They will all be coming to the house, my friends, to welcome us. No, I cannot go home.” Then he passed his hand over his forehead blindly, and added, in a stupefied tone, “and yet I must—sometime—I must—go—home!” CHAPTER V The room was very still as he spoke. Madam Schuyler forgot the coming guests and the preparations, in consternation over the thought of David and his sorrow. Marcia sobbed softly upon her father’s breast, and her father involuntarily placed his arm about her as he stood in painful thought.