"Then she turned very red and went away and sat down and wrote a letter, and I knew she had made up her mind to leave me. Still I wasn't really frightened. I said to myself, I'll pretend to let her have her own way, and she'll come round fast enough; and I began to get ready for my wedding, and took no heed of Lovedy. The night before I was married she came to me again. She was white as a sheet, and all the hardness had gone out of her. "'Mother, mother, mother,' she said, and she put her dear, bonnie arms round me and clasped me tight to her. 'Mother, give him up, for Lovedy's sake; it will break my heart, mother. Mother, I am jealous; I must have you altogether or not at all. Stay at home with your own Lovedy, for pity's sake, for pity's sake.' "Of course I soothed her and petted her, and I think--I do think now--that she, poor darling, had a kind of notion I was going to yield, and that night she slept in my arms. "The next morning I put on my neat new dress and bonnet, and went into her room. "'Lovedy, will you come to church to see your mother married?' "I never forgot--never, never, the look she gave me. She went white as marble, and her eyes blazed at me and then grew hard, and she put her head down on her hands, and, do all in my power, I could not get a word out of her. "Well, Cecile, yer father and I were married, and when we came back Lovedy was gone. There was just a little bit of a note, all blotted with tears, on the table. Cecile, I have got that little note, and you must put it in my coffin. These words were writ on it by my poor girl: "'Mother, you had no pity, so your Lovedy is gone. Good-by, mother.' "Yes, Cecile, that was the note, and what it said was true. My Lovedy was gone. She had disappeared, and so had her Aunt Fanny, and never, never from that hour have I heard one single word of Lovedy." Mrs. D'Albert paused here. The telling of her tale seemed to have changed her. In talking of her child the hard look had left her face, an expression almost beautiful in its love and longing filled her poor dim eyes, and when Cecile, in her sympathy, slipped her little hand into hers, she did not resist the pressure.