Very readily Ada fell in with the views of Mrs. Lansing, who proposed further that they should continually ring in my ears the praises of my affianced husband, of whose virtues Ada was supposed to have heard from Mrs. Lansing; while at the same time, I was to be interested as much as possible in the preparations for my wedding, which was to be quite a grand affair, and to which many of the village people were to be invited. And so the days wore on, during which I could hardly be said to exist, so little did I realize what was passing around me. I dared not think, for if I did, the tumult of thought which crowded upon me seemed turning my brain to fire, and when each morning I awoke from an unrefreshing slumber, it was always with the thought, “What is it? This load which oppresses me so?”—then, as the stern reality came up before me, I would bury my face in the pillow and ask that I might die, and thus escape the living death which awaited me, and which was now but a week or two in the distance. CHAPTER XXIV. THE CRISIS. It was the night before the one appointed for the bridal, and in the solitude of her chamber, a young girl wept in the utter hopelessness of despair. At the morrow’s early dawn _he_ would be there to claim her as his bride, and though he was noble and good, there was in her heart no answering chord of love, and she knew that without such love their union would be unholy. Earnestly, and with many tears had she striven to awaken again the deep affection she had felt for him in the time gone by, but it could not be, and shudderingly she thought of the long weary years when she should be an unloving wife, bearing a crushed and aching heart, wherein was enshrined the memory of one, of whom it would soon be a sin to think. On the table at her side lay her bridal dress, the gift of Richard Delafield, who, without a shadow on his brow, or a wavering in the tones of his voice, had asked her to accept it as a token of the _esteem_ he should ever feel for her! Alas, poor Rose, as your tears fell like rain upon the orange wreath which seemed to mock your woe, how little did you dream of the anguish it cost the donor to say to you the words he did, or that your sorrow was naught compared to his, for _you_ could weep, while to him this privilege was denied, and his was the hard task of enduring in silence the burning pain which no tear-drop came to moisten.