She was at her tea table, closely surrounded, prettily coloured by excitement, animated, at her best, tastefully gowned in a becoming dove-grey that fortuitously had arrived from the dressmaker that morning and mingled (she felt) a tribute to her new dignity with a touch of half-mourning for the boy her relationship to whom death with a hot finger had touched to life. Thus Mrs. Letham--new Lady Burdon--took the eye and took it well. This was the moment of her triumph; and that is a moment that is fairy wand to knock asunder the shackles of the heavier years, restoring youth; to warm and make generous the heart; to light the eye and lift the spirit. Hers, hers that moment! She the commanding and captivating figure in that assembly! Her spirit was equal with her presence. Physically queening it among her friends, psychically she was aloft and afloat in the exaltation that her bearing advertised. Each new congratulation as it came was a vassal hand put out to touch the sceptre she chose to extend. The prattle of voices was a delectable hymn raised to her praise in her new dignity. She was mentally enthroned, queen of a kingdom all her own; and as she visualised its fair places she had a sense of herself, Cinderella-like, shedding drab garments from her shoulders, appearing most wonderfully arrayed; shaking from her skirts the dull past, with eager hands greeting a future splendidly coloured, singing to her with siren note, created for her foot and her pleasure. Consider her state. The better to consider it, consider that something of these sensations is the lot of every woman when, on her marriage eve, a girl, sleepless she lies through that night, imaging the womanhood that waits her beyond the darkness. It is the threshold of life for woman, this night before the vow, and has no counterpart in all a man's days from boyhood to grave. How should it? The sexes are as widely sundered in habit, thought, custom, as two separate and most alien races. Love has conducted every plighted woman to this threshold and has so delectably engaged her attention on the road that she has reckoned little of the new world towards which she is speeding. Now, on her marriage eve, she is at night and alone: her eager feet upon the immediate moment beyond whose passage lies the unexplored. Love for this space takes rest. To-morrow he will lead her blindfolded into the new country; to-night, poised upon the crest to which blindfolded he has led her, she stands and looks across the prospect, shading her eyes, atremble with ecstasy at the huge adventure. Mighty courage she has--a frail figure, barriers closing up behind her to shut forever the easy paths of maidenhood; hill and valley stretching limitless before, where lie lurking heaven knows what ravening monsters. But she is the born explorer, predestined for this frightful plunge into the unknown, heedless of its dangers, intoxicated by its spaciousness, amazingly