So amid good wishes and blessings the fair brides passed up the stately aisle on the arms of their father, followed by a score of lovely bridesmaids in snowy flower-bedecked robes. At the altar they were met by Lancelot and Philip, and then, above the pealing notes of the wedding march, the minister's voice arose in the beautiful words of the marriage service. Silence brooded over the throng softly as the wings of a dove, while the holy, reverent words filled the church. In the stillness the sweet responses of the brides even were distinctly audible. The rings were slipped upon their fingers, the solemn words of the benediction were spoken, and then, with the sweet strains of music echoing above their heads, the fragrance of flowers beneath their feet, and the tender blessings of friends around them, the two beautiful brides, with their chosen mates, went forth with smiles to the future that lay beaming in the sunshine of love and happiness. [THE END.] [Illustration] QUEENIE'S TERRIBLE SECRET OR, _A Young Girl's Strange Fate_. By MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER. CHAPTER I. "There is positively not a dollar left to buy a dress for Queenie and yet she _will_ insist upon going to the ball. Could you let me have your old green silk to make over for her, Sydney?" The small figure perched on the top of a large Saratoga trunk sprang down upon the floor, and stamped her foot so vehemently that the blue satin bow flew off from her tiny slipper. "_Wear_ Sydney's old green silk to the ball!" cried Queenie, indignantly. "Indeed I _won't_, mamma, I will stay at home first!" "The best place for you," said her sister, Sydney, calmly. "I see no use in taking a child like you to Mrs. Kirk's grand ball." "A child, indeed," flashed the younger sister, with a pout of her rosebud lips. "I am as tall as you, Syd, and I was seventeen yesterday. It's real mean to call me a child and leave me at home every time I get invited out. I know why it is, though. It's because mamma spends every dollar papa gives her decking out you and Georgie, and there's never a decent thing left for me to wear." "It is because you are too pretty, my dear," laughed her father, who had entered the dressing-room unnoticed. "The girls keep you back because they are afraid you will cut them out with their fine beaux." Sydney and Georgina flushed angrily and muttered that it wasn't so, and that papa ought to be ashamed of himself--it was all his fault that Queenie was setting herself up for a woman so fast when he couldn't afford to dress the two that were already grown decently enough for the position they had to fill in society. The poor, worried mother, having been so quickly snubbed on the subject of the old green silk, looked on and said nothing.