"Yes," he answers, slowly. "I have heard the faintest rumor of it," looking down with a cloud in his clear eyes at the fair inscrutable face. "Are you worried about it? I remember to have heard you say your nearest relatives were there." "Only distant relatives," she answers, composedly. "I am no more worried about them than about the other inhabitants of that city. My relatives had little sympathy for me in the days of my bereavement and destitution, and though one may overlook and forgive such things one does not easily forget." He was looking at her all the time she was speaking, though her eyes had not lifted to his. On the sweet, outwardly serene face he saw the impress of a growing purpose. What it was he dared not whisper to his own heart. The cloud only leaves his brow when they reach his radiant sister. She stands beneath a bridal arch of fragrant white blossoms, roses, and lilies, and orange blossoms dropping their pendant leaves down over her head as she receives the congratulations and adieus of her friends before she goes to change her bridal robe for the traveling-dress in which she is to start for the other shores of the Atlantic. Conway is beside her, nonchalant, smiling, handsome, very well satisfied with himself and the world. As his glance falls on the fair, pensive face of the Senator's deserted wife, the smile forsakes his lip, one sigh is given to the memory of "what might have been," and turning again to his young bride, the past is put away from him forever, and he is content. And presently the new-made Mrs. Conway flits up stairs with Gracie, to array herself in the sober gray traveling-silk. Grace parts the misty folds of the bridal vail and kisses the pearl-fair forehead. "Oh, darling!" she whispers, "may God be very good to you--may he bless you in your union with the man of your choice." Lulu's tears, always lying near the surface, begin to flow. "Oh, Gracie," she says, suddenly, "if all should not be as we fear--if I should chance to see your husband on the shores of Europe, may I tell him--remember he has suffered so much--may I tell him that you take back the words you said in the first agony of your baby's loss?" "What was it I said?" asked Gracie, with soft surprise. "Do you not remember the night you were taken ill, when you were half delirious, and he came to see you----" "_Did_ he come to see me?" interrupts Grace. "Certainly--don't you remember? You were half delirious, and you fancied your husband had hidden away the child to worry you, and you said----" "I said--oh, what did I say, Lulu?" breathed the listener, impatiently. Lulu stopped short, looking, in surprise, at the other. "Gracie, is it possible that you were entirely delirious, and that you recollect nothing of your husband's visit and your refusal to see him?" "This is the first I ever knew of it," said Grace, sadly; "but go on, Lulu, and tell me, please, what I did say."