But her lover's looks and smiles were warm enough to atone for the indifference of the rest, and the soft color flew to her cheeks again as he took her hand tenderly, saying: "Get ready, darling, and I shall take you for a long drive into the country this evening." Ah! how Olive and Ela envied her the bliss of the long tête-à-tête drive as they watched the lovers going away in the elegant phaeton behind the spirited gray ponies, the sunshine resting so lovingly on Dainty's curly locks beneath the simple white hat. When they returned, in the last rosy glow of sunset, Dainty seemed to have received a new baptism of beauty, she was so changed from the pale, nervous girl of a few hours ago. Now her cheeks and lips glowed rosy-red, and her eyes were bright with happiness--the happiness of loving and being loved. It made her cousins so angry they could have killed her in their jealous spite, for it lacked but two weeks to the wedding now, and it seemed as if nothing that spite or malice could invent had any power to break off the consummation of the engagement. They were so furious they would willingly have poisoned her, but for fear of being found out. No words could tell how they hated that fair face and golden hair, that rosy mouth, those blue eyes and dimples that had rivaled them in the prize they longed to win. The sight of the happy lovers was gall and wormwood to their envious hearts. They were indignant, too, because they could see, beneath the surface of Love's coldly courteous manner, that he vaguely suspected them of having a hand in the mysterious plot to frighten his timid betrothed. To-day he had carried matters with a high hand, interrogating all the servants carefully, and offering a reward of a hundred dollars to any one who should discover the identity of the person playing ghost. Their greed thus excited, every hireling was anxious to earn the reward, and it would certainly be dangerous for any one to attempt again the cruel role of ghost, for detection seemed almost certain. The young man had also made some investigations that resulted in showing him how very easy it had been for the malicious enemy of Dainty to intrude on her whenever it seemed desirable to do so. The room adjoining hers was an unused bedroom that communicated with hers by a narrow curtained door back of her bed. How easy it had been for the intruder to enter the vacant room, imitate the monk's cough there to the heart's content, then glide through the curtained door to the bedside, alarming the sleeping girl by a cold touch or hacking cough, and escaping before she could give any alarm! Love even found that a small hole had been bored in the wall between the two rooms, thus affording an opportunity for the use of chemicals in displaying the grisly green light whose weird play upon the walls and about the room had so alarmed the victims of the cruel joke.