“But when he had paid the money to the bank and got the necklace, and then found I didn’t mean to marry him, he felt that he’d been, as he said, stung. Even the necklace wasn’t his, he said. It was practically stolen goods. It had belonged to grandmother all the time. She could have made the bank give it back to her without paying back the money, just by proving to them that mother hadn’t had any right to give it to them. “Oh, I can see now how he felt about it. I suppose for any one like him it was the natural way to feel. But I couldn’t see anything then. I’d just gone dead, like a flat tire. “We went along for miles after he’d told me that nice little story without saying a word, either of us. Then I told him I’d marry him if he wanted me to. I said it seemed that I’d already been sold to him. I couldn’t see any other way out. I couldn’t pay him his beastly twenty-five thousand dollars, and I didn’t know any one I could ask for it--not for a thing like that. “I didn’t begin to hate him till then. I’d hated myself, and hated mother. But when I told him I’d marry him because he’d paid me---- Oh, I told him more than that too. I said that he could do anything he liked with me, but that I loved Bill and would go right on loving him.--And after I’d told him all that, he began to get--_amiable_. “He said he’d known he could trust me to do the right thing. He’d been sure all the time I hadn’t known what mother had asked him to do. He said it was a foolish fancy that I was in love with Bill. That I’d get over it as soon as we’d been married a little while. He said he was acting for my own good and what I needed now was a little firmness to keep me from leaving the rails and making a hash of my whole life. He said he was sure we were going to be happy together. “I didn’t say anything at all; just hung on and kept from jumping out of the car. That’s how we got back to The Oaks. “Of course the minute Bill saw the satisfied look in Bruce’s face he knew I’d fallen down on him somehow. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d expected me to do, and he was pretty well upset. So after the rehearsal I took him off in front of everybody and told him what had happened. I didn’t have time for the details, of course, but I told him Bruce had paid for me in advance. “He wanted me to postpone the wedding, anyhow, and give him time to raise the money himself. I told him I wasn’t going to be auctioned off any more, let alone to him. He says now that he saw the point all right, but he wouldn’t admit it then. The last thing he said was that he’d think of a way yet, and I told him it was all right if he could. He’s terribly clever, but I don’t believe there was any way, except the one that happened.” “What did happen?” I asked. I’ll admit my mind wasn’t working very well. It was too boiling hot.