It was all very hurried at the last. Madam Schuyler and Dolly the maid helped her off with the satin and lace finery, and she was soon out of her bridal attire and struggling with the intricacies of Kate’s travelling costume. Marcia was not Marcia any longer, but Mrs. David Spafford. She had been made to feel the new name almost at once, and it gave her a sense of masquerading pleasant enough for the time being, but with a dim foreboding of nameless dread and emptiness for the future, like all masquerading which must end sometime. And when the mask is taken off how sad if one is not to find one’s real self again: or worse still if one may never remove the mask, but must grow to it and be it from the soul. All this Marcia felt but dimly of course, for she was young and light hearted naturally, and the excitement and pretty things about her could not but be pleasant. To have Kate’s friends stand about her, half shyly trying to joke with her as they might have done with Kate, to feel their admiring glances, and half envious references to her handsome husband, almost intoxicated her for the moment. Her cheeks grew rosier as she tied on Kate’s pretty poke bonnet whose nodding blue flowers had been brought over from Paris by a friend of Kate’s. It seemed a shame that Kate should not have her things after all. The pleasure died out of Marcia’s eyes as she carefully looped the soft blue ribbons under her round chin and drew on Kate’s long gloves. There was no denying the fact that Kate’s outfit was becoming to Marcia, for she had that complexion that looks well with any color under the sun, though in blue she was not at her best. When Marcia was ready she stood back from the little looking-glass, with a frightened, half-childish gaze about the room. Now that the last minute was come, there was no one to understand Marcia’s feelings nor help her. Even the girls were merely standing there waiting to say the last formal farewell that they might be free to burst into an astonished chatter of exclamations over Kate’s romantic disappearance. They were Kate’s friends, not Marcia’s, and they were bidding Kate’s clothes good-bye for want of the original bride. Marcia’s friends were too young and too shy to do more than stand back in awe and gaze at their mate so suddenly promoted to a life which but yesterday had seemed years away for any of them. [Illustration: Copyright by C. Klackner THE STEPMOTHER’S ARMS WERE AROUND HER.] Copyright by C. Klackner THE STEPMOTHER’S ARMS WERE AROUND HER.