At that moment a stately figure in rustling silk crossed the threshold, and a haughty voice exclaimed: "Doctor Platt and Mr. Chilton, will you kindly withdraw for a few moments? I wish to speak privately with my step-son." She closed the door on their retreating forms, glanced scornfully at the silent, sleeping face of Mrs. Chase, and exclaimed, eagerly: "What strange story is this that is being whispered around, Love, that Dainty has deserted you and eloped with a more favored lover?" "There is the note I found on her pillow. You are welcome to read it," he replied, coldly. She took it up from the table, glanced quickly over the contents, and groaned: "What a wicked girl to throw you over at the eleventh hour like this! How will you bear the shame of it, my poor boy, jilted like this, at the very altar, by the poor nobody whom you had stooped to raise to your side?" Love answered not one word. He simply rested his head on his elbow, and stared curiously into Mrs. Ellsworth's eager, excited face with his dark, penetrating eyes as she continued: "I am pained for you, my dear Love, but not at all surprised. I feared something like this, for I knew that Vernon Ashley was Dainty's lover, not Ela's, and I believed that love would triumph in the end over the greed for gold. Poor Dainty! she must have loved him well to sacrifice all her ambitions for a poor man's love. But she will be happier with him than she could have been with you. The hand without the heart does not promise well for wedded bliss." Still without a word, he listened to the fluent tide of her speech, a strange, mocking light in his eyes, whose portent she could not fathom. She continued, insinuatingly: "But Dainty Chase has done you a cruel injustice, Love, for, besides depriving you of a bride to-day, she has cheated you out of your inheritance. Remember, unless you are married to-day, your fortune reverts to me!" He bowed in silence, and Mrs. Ellsworth added, nervously: "No wonder you are stricken dumb by the magnitude of your misfortune, losing everything that made life worth living, as it were. But cheer up, my dear boy, for I am not so selfish as to wish to deprive you of your fortune; and as soon as I heard that Dainty had eloped with another, I began to plan to help you, and I soon saw that there was a way out of your difficulty." "Yes?" Love said, inquiringly, and his pale lips curled with a sneer whose subtle meaning she could not understand; but taking it for encouragement, she blurted out, boldly: "The preacher is here, the people are here, and the wedding-breakfast waits. You can vanquish fate if you will. Though Dainty is gone, I have two other nieces." Again that cold, scornful smile as she added, desperately: "I see that Dainty advises you here to marry either Olive or Ela. Well, you can have either one for the asking." His pale, writhing lips unclosed to ask, curtly: "Are you speaking with their permission?"