The guests were beginning to return from the beach by this time, and as Mark had said all he had intended saying, he left Katy with Wilford, who had just come in and joined a merry party of Bostonians only that day arrived. That night at the Ocean House the guests missed something from their festivities; the dance was not so exhilarating or the small-talk between so lively, while more than one white-kidded dandy swore mentally at the innocent Wilford, whose wife declined to join in the gayeties, and in a plain white muslin, with only a pond lily in her hair, kept by her husband’s side, notwithstanding that he bade her leave him and accept some of her numerous invitations to join the giddy dance. This sober phase of Katy did not on the whole please Wilford as much as her gayer ones had done. All he had ever dreamed of the sensation his bride would create was more than verified. Katy had fulfilled his highest expectations, reaching a point from which, as she had said to Mark, she could dictate to his mother, if she chose, and he did not care to see her relinquish it. But Katy remained true to herself. Dropping her girlish playfulness, she assumed a quiet, gentle dignity, which became her even better than her gayer mood had done, making her ten times more popular and more sought after, until she begged to go away, persuading Wilford at last to name the day for their departure, and then, never doubting for a moment that her destination was Silverton, she wrote to Helen that she should be home on such a day, and as they would come by way of Providence and Worcester, they would probably reach West Silverton at ten o’clock, A. M. “Wilford,” she added in a postscript, “has gone down to bathe, and as the mail is just closing, I shall send this letter without his seeing it. Of course it can make no difference, for I have talked all summer of coming, and he understands it.” CHAPTER XX. MARK RAY AT SILVERTON.