“Then you don’t believe with Papa,” she said with a smile, “that his mouth is cruel, and that he will try to whip me in five years, do you?” Mrs. Durham laughed. “Yes, he will whip you, but they will be love licks and you will cry for more. Your lover is a rare and brilliant man. He is strong, rugged, resistless in will, fierce in his passions from the blood of sunny France in his veins, and masterful in life from the iron heritage of the hardier races. You have seen these traits. Wait until you know him as I do in his daily life, and you will find a wealth of patience and a depth of tenderness that will startle. I envy you.” “Thank you,” Sallie interrupted. “You don’t know how glad your words are to my heart. I’ve not seen much of that trait yet. I’ve been half afraid of him sometimes. Let me kiss you again.” The keeper of the jail treated Gaston with every consideration and arranged for the marriage to take place in the little sitting room where he allowed him to come on parole. The bride wore a plain travelling dress in which she had come from New York. She had driven from the depot past Stella Holt’s home, and with her straight to the jail. Gaston thought her the fairest vision that ever greeted the eye of man as he stood by her side; for he had seen that day the soul of a radiantly beautiful woman in the splendour of shameless love. His own soul was drunk with the joy of it all and his eyes now devoured her with their intense light. Standing there before the Preacher whom he loved as his father, and the foster mother who had wrapped his little shivering body in the warmth of a great heart that night the light of life went out in his own mother’s room, with Stella Holt’s sympathetic face reflecting her friend’s happiness, the marriage ceremony was performed. He took Sallie’s trembling hand in his and promised to love, honour and cherish her as long as life endured. And under his breath he added, “Here and hereafter--forever.” And then she looked into his smiling face with her blue eyes full of unspeakable love, and in a voice low and soft as the note of a flute, gave to him her life. And the Preacher said, “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder!” She stayed there with him until the gathering twilight. “Now, I must hurry back to my father and win him. I will not come to you a beggar. My father shall not disinherit me. I am going to bring you my fortune, too.” “Oh! curse that fortune, dear! I’ve feared it was that keeping us apart so long.”