"Your nerves are shaken--you are getting hysterical," exclaims Mrs. Douglas. "Of course it is a very trying time, my dear. You must have some sal volatile before you start. For Heaven's sake don't make a scene in church, or break down, or do anything ridiculous. You always are so odd. Now, any other girl would be thinking how she looked and----" "What a good price those looks had fetched," interrupts Lauraine sarcastically. "Yes--thank goodness, I have some sense of shame left. I do not feel proud of my position to-day, or my part in this heartless barter." "Barter! What makes you use such absurd words!" exclaims her mother angrily. "After all I have done for you--after all my sacrifices!" "Hush!" the girl says wearily, "don't let us discuss that subject now. I think none of your sacrifices would look very great before this of mine, if it came to a question of comparison. But it is no matter. Of course you are right; an _esclandre_ now would be too terrible." She turns coldly away, and takes up the beautiful bouquet that Sir Francis has sent her an hour ago. The smell of the white roses and orange blossoms turns her faint and sick. All her life long, she thinks, that scent will, fill her with just such shuddering horror as she feels now. She lets the bouquet fall and clasps her hands despairingly together. "I did not think it would be so bad as this," she moans. "O God! is there no escape?" But in the sunny, luxuriantly appointed chamber all is silence. A few minutes after, and down the crimson-carpeted steps a white and radiant figure floats to the waiting carriage. "How lovely! How young! How beautifully dressed!" These are the murmurs that fall from an admiring crowd, kept in check by an officious policeman, as they press around the awning that has sheltered the bride's passage. "Lor! if she oughtn't to be happy." Unconscious of the comments, heedless of the observations, Lauraine is driven off to the fashionable church where her future husband awaits as sad and reluctant a bride as ever the martyrdom of Fashion and the exigencies of Society have sacrificed to the God of Mammon. The bride's carriage has scarcely disappeared round the corner when a hansom cab dashes up, and is arrested at the awning. A young man jumps out, pays the cabman, and gives a startled glance at the carpeted steps, the gaping crowd, the unwonted stir and bustle around the house. He is not a wedding-guest evidently; there is nothing very festive about his appearance, but for all that he passes up the crimson-carpeted steps and into the hall, and there has an interview with one of the footmen, who, having received instructions on the matter, conducts the visitor into a small room at the back of the house, where sits an old woman with a snowy mutch on her head, and a stick in her hand by which she helps herself to rise. "My lad, my dear young maister!" she cries, and he comes straight up and gives her a hearty kiss and a boisterous hug.