"Now you can be frank with me, my dear," said the general. "I know you ladies--how cheated you feel if you aren't married with all the frills and fixings. So that's the way it shall be done." "Really," protested Mildred, "I'm absolutely frank. I wish it to be quite quiet--in our drawing-room, with no guests." Siddall smiled, genial and tolerant. "Don't argue with me, my dear. I know what you want, and I'll see that you get it. Go ahead with these shop-people I've put at your disposal--and go as far as you like. There isn't anything--ANYTHING--in the way of clothes that you can't have--that you mustn't have. Mrs. General Siddall is going to be the best-dressed woman in the world--as she is the prettiest. I haven't opened an account for you with Tiffany's or any of those people. I'll look out for that part of the business, myself." "I don't care for jewelry," said Mildred. "Naturally not for the kind that's been within your means heretofore," replied he; "but you'll open your eyes when you see MY jewelry for MY wife. All in good time, my dear. You and your mother must start right in with the shopping; and, a week or so before the wedding, I'll send my people down to transform the house. I may be wrong, but I rather think that the Siddall wedding will cause some talk." He was not wrong. Through his confidential secretary, Harding the thorough, the newspaper press was induced to take an interest in the incredible extravagance Siddall was perpetrating in arranging for a fitting wedding for General William Siddall. For many days before the ceremony there were daily columns about him and his romantic career and his romantic wooing of the New Jersey girl of excellent family and social position but of comparatively modest means. The shopkeepers gave interviews on the trousseau. The decorators and caterers detailed the splendors and the costliness of the preparations of which they had charge. From morning until dark a crowd hung round the house at Hanging Rock, and on the wedding day the streets leading to it were blocked--chiefly with people come from a distance, many of them from New York. At the outset all this noise was deeply distasteful to Mildred, but after a few days she recovered her normal point of view, forgot the kind of man she was marrying in the excitement and exultation over her sudden splendor and fame. So strongly did the delusion presently become, that she was looking at the little general with anything but unfavorable eyes. He seemed to her a quaint, fascinating, benevolent necromancer, having miraculous powers which he was exercising in her behalf. She even reproached herself with ingratitude in not being wildly in love with him. Would not any other girl, in her place, have fallen over ears in love with this marvelous man?