"Easily enough. You can tell my sister that you wish to go home and spend a week with your parents. Then I can take you to the city right away and marry you. We can spend a week traveling about and enjoying our honeymoon, after which I can send you back here, and Mrs. Bowers will think that you have been at the farm the whole time. By-and-bye, when my affairs get straight, we will declare our marriage to everybody. By George, how surprised they will be then! Now, my dear little wife that is to be, will you consent to my plan?" Jennie hesitated a moment, then murmured a timid and joyful "yes." CHAPTER XVII. The summer sunshine waned, the summer roses faded, and the "melancholy days--the saddest of the year," hurried swiftly on. The chilling winds howled drearily about the river cottage, but long ere the last autumn leaf was whirled from the tall trees standing round about like giant sentinels, the fickle fancy that Leon Vinton had felt for the farmer's dark-eyed daughter had perished like the frailest flower of the summer. "The illusion was soon over," he said to himself. "It was the briefest fancy I ever had. But that was her own fault. She was too easily won. The game was not worth the candle." Simple little Jennie had been living in a "Fool's Paradise" ever since the mock-marriage which the deceiver had duly caused to be celebrated. Ostensibly she remained as the companion of Mrs. Bowers, and that kind lady appeared to be perfectly blind and deaf to all the strange things that went on around her. If Jennie had not been the most innocent of women she could not have failed to know that Mrs. Bowers was perfectly cognizant of her secret, and was only laughing in her sleeve all the while that she appeared so stupid and good-natured to the new victim of her employer. "I am heartily tired of the little fool," he said to her one day in confidence, when the autumn days had given place to the freezing ones of winter; "I wish I could get rid of her." "Your fancy was soon over this time," remarked Mrs. Bowers. "Her own fault," grumbled the wretch. "In the first place she was too lightly won. In love more than half the pleasure lies in the pursuit, and 'lightly won is lightly lost.' She is changed now, also. How rosy and bright she was at first--how pale, how altered, how plain she is now!" "She is _ill_," said Mrs. Bowers, in a significant tone. "The deuce!" exclaimed Leon Vinton, angrily. "Why, then, I surely _must_ get rid of her. But how to do it--that's the question!" "Tell her the truth--that she is not married at all--and send her home to her parents," said the woman, heartlessly. He did not reply for a moment, but paused to light a cigar and place it between his lips. Then he threw himself back on the lounge where he sat, and remarked indifferently: "Yes; I suppose I shall have to do that. There will be a scene, I suppose."