A letter received by Mark from Fanny a few days before he died had decided Tom upon his future, and three weeks later, when a carriage full of tourists came from a hotel to see the grave of the girl who was always spoken of as “the heroine of the valley,” the cottage was closed and Tom was gone. CHAPTER XVII. IN RIDGEFIELD. Fanny and Roy had been married amid flowers and music and crowds of people and the grand event chronicled in the Boston and New York papers. That the bride’s own father was living was not mentioned. The reporters had not gotten upon that item of gossip and Helen did not enlighten them. Fanny was the only daughter of Judge and Mrs. Prescott, and when she read one of the lengthy articles describing the wedding and her dress and her mother’s dress and dwelling at length upon the position and wealth of the Tracys and Prescotts and Masons she rebelled against it almost as hotly as years before Uncle Zach had rebelled against the advertisement her father had written of the Prospect House. “I wish I had kept my own name, or taken it when I knew who I was. I am not Fanny Prescott,” she said, hotly, while Roy rejoined, “Of course not. You are Fanny Mason, my wife.” They went to Florida where they spent the winter and Roy grew brown as a berry with being so much on the lakes and rivers and Fanny grew bilious eating too many oranges, and both were perfectly happy. Early in the spring they returned to Boston, where they staid with Roy’s father until June, when Fanny suggested that, instead of going to some fashionable watering place, they spend the summer in Ridgefield. Her father had sent her a deed of his Dalton property, and now that she owned it she began to have an affection for the old ruin and wanted to see it, she said to Roy, who answered, “All right. I’d rather go where I can have you to myself than to a hundred watering places where everybody will be admiring the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. Roy Mason; that’s what the reporters would call you.” “Horrid!” Fanny said. “I’m not beautiful, and I haven’t a single accomplishment. I am just Fanny,—your wife,” and she nestled close to him, with a look in her blue eyes which told Roy how much he was to her.