"When you married father? Yes, I know," said Virginia, but she said it without conviction. In her heart she did not believe that marrying her father--perfect old darling that he was!--could ever have caused any girl just the particular kind of ecstasy that she was feeling. She even doubted whether such stainless happiness had ever before visited a mortal upon this planet. It was not only wonderful, it was not only perfect, but it felt so absolutely new that she secretly cherished the belief that it had been invented by the universe especially for Oliver and herself. It was ridiculous to imagine that the many million pairs of lovers that were marrying every instant had each experienced a miracle like this, and yet left the earth pretty much as they had found it before they fell in love. It was a week before her wedding, and she stood in the centre of the spare room in the west wing, which had been turned over to Miss Willy Whitlow. The little seamstress knelt now at her feet, pinning up the hem of a black silk polonaise, and turning her head from time to time to ask Mrs. Pendleton if she was "getting the proper length." For a quarter of a century, no girl of Virginia's class had married in Dinwiddie without the crowning benediction of a black silk gown, and ever since the announcement of Virginia's betrothal her mother had cramped her small economies in order that she might buy "grosgrain" of the best quality. "Is that right, mother? Do you think I might curve it a little more in front?" asked the girl, holding her feet still with difficulty because she felt that she wanted to dance. "No, dear, I think it will stay in fashion longer if you don't shorten it. Then it will be easier to make over the more goods you leave in it." "It looks nice on me, doesn't it?" Standing there, with the stiff silk slipping away from her thin shoulders, and the dappled sunlight falling over her neck and arms through the tawny leaves of the paulownia tree in the garden, she was like a slim white lily unfolding softly out of its sheath. "Lovely, darling, and it will be so useful. I got the very best quality, and it ought to wear forever." "I made Mrs. William Goode one ten years ago, and she's still wearing it," remarked Miss Willy, speaking with an effort through a mouthful of pins.