This anonymous wedding-gift was the only little bit of romance about the whole business. Faith sat and sewed with her sisters day after day, listening to long lectures on economy from Prudence, or read her allotted task to Charity. She did not dare to omit this duty even the day before the wedding. Dr. Stewart came in towards evening and found her pale and half hysterical over Carlyle's 'French Revolution.' "I think we need one too," he muttered, as he removed the book from her hand. "No more reading to-night, Miss Charity. What do you say to a game of chess with me?" and Faith gave him a grateful glance and darted from the room. It was a simple, unpretending wedding. Faith looked very demure and sweet in her fawn-colored silk and pretty white bonnet. Dr. Stewart paid her the first compliment she had received from him. "We shall have the old Faith back by-and-bye," he said to her. "I mean to give you a week of sea breezes, and then we will settle down into regular Darby and Joan ways, shall we, my wife?" And Faith blushed and said, "Yes." And it could not be denied that Mrs. Stewart was a far happier woman than Faith Palmer had been. Langley and Cathy were amused at the brisk, matronly airs that soon replaced the soft melancholy that had been Faith's habitual manner. Angus was evidently perfection in his wife's eyes; his opinions were the soundest, his views never to be controverted, or his word questioned. "Are you happy, Faith?" Langley asked her very tenderly when they first met after her marriage. "I am the happiest woman in the world; and Angus is everything that he can be," returned the mistress of Juniper Lodge. "Do you know, he won't hear of our neglecting Cara. I read to her every day for an hour, and he often goes in and plays a game of chess with her; and he has taught Hope besique and cribbage, and they play them together. Ah, you don't know how dear and thoughtful he is for them as well as for me!" finished Faith, with a look of infinite contentment. CHAPTER IV. THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM. "A woman is more considerate in affairs of love than a man, because love is more the study and business of her life."--_Washington Irving._ It was about this time that Garth began to feel very uncomfortable. Hitherto his quiet, well-assured life, with its eight-and-twenty years of healthful work and activity, its moderate aims and small ambitions, had been singularly free from conflict. Mental disturbance, the weariness of self-argument, the harass of stormy passions, had been wholly unknown to him. In his ordered existence the pains and penalties of a lover's martyrdom had not vexed him. He was still angry with Dora, but his discomfort did not proceed wholly from his wrath; it lay rather in a concealed fear that he was mistaken in his own feelings.