They did not know how she had schemed and sinned for that honor, nor that the sweets of victory had turned to dead sea fruit upon her lips. His short-lived passion was dead, and in spite of his honorable efforts to disguise his indifference, Cora realized his patient misery, and knew that the day of their wedding was secretly unwelcome to his heart. A nobler woman would have given him his freedom unasked, too proud to accept the hand without the heart. Not so Cora, who recklessly ran every risk for the sake of gratifying her love and ambition, hurrying on the wedding day in spite of her aunt’s lingering illness and painful anxiety, and despite the fact that she knew that secretly Frank resented the unseemly haste. Indeed, she had overheard him lamenting it to Mrs. Dalrymple, saying: “I fear it looks selfish to you, our marrying and going off in such haste, leaving you in this trouble.” “Do not think of me. Cora is the only one to be considered now. She feels that she has waited too long for her happiness to have it postponed longer,” she answered. He noticed that she made no reference to his own case, and flushed slightly, dreading lest she had penetrated the secret of his love for her missing daughter, and meant to rebuke him for fickleness to Cora. He said no more, for Cora entered just then with a downcast face, having managed to overhear their brief conversation. They were going for a drive, and presently Mrs. Dalrymple was left alone with her thoughts. They were not pleasant ones, for they veered with painful persistence between the missing daughter and the dead father. In the dear, dead past she had loved him well, and the old love seemed to wake again, now that he was dead and beyond her tenderness. So often since you went away, I wonder in a vain despair, If you are sad, if you are glad, And if you miss me there! Do you recall impatient words Full of life’s jar and pain? Oh, I would take them back, dear heart, If you could come again! She leaned her beautiful, dark head on her wasted, white hand where the blue veins showed so clearly, and burning tears flowed down her cheeks. Suzanne entered with the afternoon mail on a salver, placed it on a stand before her mistress, and gently retired. Dashing away the unwelcome tears, she began going over the letters, mostly affectionate missives from her “dear Four Hundred friends,” expressing affectionate pleasure at her rumored great improvement in health. Dropping them wearily one after the other, she came upon one addressed in so large a masculine hand that she stared at it in some curiosity. Then she saw that it was not addressed to herself, but to Miss Darling Dalrymple, and was postmarked New York. “How very, very strange this is, and how familiar the handwriting looks!” she cried with a quickened heartthrob, and she decided that in this case it was her duty to open her daughter’s letter.