“Easy as anything. He asked me if I would mind running across the water to attend to a matter for the service and said I might have extra time while there for a vacation. He never suspects that vacation is to be used as a wedding trip. I’ll write him, or ’phone him the night we leave New York. I may have to stay in the city two or three days to get this Holman matter settled, and then we can be off. In the meantime you can spend the time reconciling your mother to her new son. Do you think we’ll have a very hard time explaining matters to her?” “Not a bit,” said Celia, gaily. “She never did like George. It was the only thing we ever disagreed about, my marrying him. She suspected all the time I wasn’t happy and couldn’t understand why I insisted on marrying him when I hadn’t seen him for ten years. She begged me to wait until he had been back in the country for a year or two, but he would not hear to such a thing and threatened to carry out his worst at once.” Gordon’s heart suddenly contracted with righteous wrath over the cowardliness of the man who sought to gain his own ends by intimidating a woman,--and this woman, so dear, so beautiful, so lovely in her nature. It seemed the man’s heart must indeed be black to have done what he did. He mentally resolved to search him out and bring him to justice as soon as he reached New York. It puzzled him to understand how easily he seemed to have abandoned his purposes. Perhaps after all he was more of a coward than they thought, and had not dared to remain in the country when he found that Celia had braved his wrath and married another man. He would find out about him and set the girl’s heart at rest just as soon as possible, that any embarrassment at some future time might be avoided. Gordon stooped and kissed his wife again, a caress that seemed to promise all reparation for the past. But it suddenly occurred to the two that trains did not wait for lovers’ long loitering, and with one accord they went to work. Celia of course had very little preparation to make. Her trunk was probably in Chicago and would need to be wired for. Gordon attended to that the first thing, looking up the number of the check and ordering it back to New York by telegraph. Turning from the telephone he rang for the man and asked Celia to give the order for lunch while he got together some things that he must take with him. A stay of several weeks would necessitate a little more baggage than he had taken to New York. He went into the bedroom and began pulling out things to pack but when Celia turned from giving her directions she found him standing in the bedroom doorway with an old-fashioned velvet jewel case in his hand which he had just taken from the little safe in his room. His face wore a wonderful tender light as if he had just discovered something precious.