“It seems Charley had known the girl before that night. He met her first in the town where you live before she went upon the stage, and fell in love with her then, so he says. But she had some sort of a strange disappearance, then, and he believed her dead until coming home, unexpectedly, the night of our grand ball, he saw her on the stage and knew her at once for the missing girl. He was so agitated between his duty to you and his love for her that he did not make his presence known to us, but went out into the grounds to overcome his agitation. There he had the good fortune, as he calls it, of saving her life. The romance of this incident increased his love to recklessness so that he threw pride and duty to the winds and proposed to the girl yesterday. She accepted the offer, and this morning he procured a minister, and they were married, with the Clines as witnesses.” Lucile chimed in furiously: “He had the impudence to come and tell us all about it when the thing was irrevocably done, and to beg us to accept that nobody for a sister!” Rosalind would never be paler than now, as she sat and listened, speechless with rage, at Charley’s escapade. Where were all the clever plans she had made for circumventing him now? All shattered to pieces by this action of the ardent lover, who had cleverly forestalled everything by his hasty wedding. “We will never accept her for a sister--never! We will never forgive him for the slight to you whom we loved already as a sister!” sobbed Marie, and at this juncture Rosalind thought it was time to fall back, half fainting, in her seat, but not to go entirely unconscious until she had heard all there was to tell. They ran to chafe her face and hands and to drop tender little kisses on her brow, until she seemed to revive, and murmured faintly: “I am better now. Go on, tell me everything.” “Of course, we overwhelmed him with bitter reproaches,” declared Marie, “and we told him we wanted nothing more to do with him, or with the low nobody he has married.” “And he said--what?” demanded Rosalind. “He pleaded for her at first, and then when he saw we were not to be placated, he grew angry, too, and left the house, saying he would rather have his little bride’s love than ours. So as soon as he left we telegraphed father, in Washington, to come home at once and see if he could do anything to break up the match, for Charley had suddenly lost his mind and married a low actress that we could never receive in the family, to say nothing of the slight he had put upon you!” “Cruel! cruel! Oh, my heart will break! I can never hold up my head again for very shame; me, Rosalind Montague, to be jilted for a creature like that--the daughter of the New Market tailoress, a woman that worked by the day in a shop!” groaned Rosalind hysterically. “Then you know the girl?” asked Madam Fortescue.