"It is very fortunate Eliot had to marry her. She is a darling, and I can see that they are beginning to fall in love with each other," said Edith. "I am so glad that it will turn out a love-match after all," Maud replied, with enthusiasm. The days came and went, and brought the early, bleak New England autumn. It was time for Sylvie to come home, but Bryant came alone. His wife had gone to New York with her family to stay for the beginning of the social season. Every one but her husband was secretly pleased when she stayed until after the New-Year festivities. Maud and Edith were quite sure that they had got along more happily without her, although they were too polite to hint such a thing to Bryant. At last she came in the middle of January. Ida Hayes, her sister, a younger edition of herself, came with her, and straightway the halcyon days of Una came to an end. Sylvie came to her room that evening, when she was putting on her simple blue silk dress for dinner, with an air of importance and anxiety. "Have you come to your senses yet--you two?" she demanded, brusquely. "If you have, I shall be glad, for I do so want these rooms for Ida." Una, with her laces all awry, looked up blankly. "I--don't--think--I understand," she answered. "Pshaw! I mean, do you use the same suite of rooms as your husband?" The pretty, wondering face did not change its color, the dark eyes only looked amazed. "Of course not," Una said, and Sylvie's red lips curled. "Of course not!" she mimicked, sneeringly. "Why, you silly child, you talk very strangely. Bryant and I share the same suite of rooms, do we not? All husbands and wives do who love each other." CHAPTER XXX. Una commenced to fasten her laces with strangely trembling fingers. "Eliot and I love each other!" she said, slowly. "Oh, indeed?" said Sylvie, with a very incredulous giggle. "You did not when I went away. Have you done your courting since, as you had no time for it before you were married?" The wonder, the half-dazed comprehension in the girl's pale face ought to have made her less pitiless, but it had been her dream and Bryant's to marry Ida to Eliot. She had said to herself many times that she could never forgive the Little Nobody that had thwarted her plans. So with an angry heart and pitiless eyes she had thrust the point of a dagger into Una's heart. But with proud, somber eyes the girl-wife said, gravely: "You said you wanted these rooms for Miss Hayes. Very well, you can have them. I dare say Maud will give me another room." "Oh, dear no, I would not turn you out of your room for the world, child!" suavely. She knew that Eliot would not permit it. "I only thought that if you had given them up and gone to Eliot's these would suit Ida. She always had them when she came before, and it does seem foolish, does it not, for man and wife to occupy six rooms when three would be enough? I hoped you and Eliot had become reconciled to your forced marriage ere this."