be brilliant. As a bride, I wore white, and when, at the moment of going
down-stairs, my husband suddenly clasped about my neck a rich necklace
of diamonds, I was seized by such a bitter sense of the contrast between
appearances and the awful reality underlying these festivities, that I
reeled in his arms, and had to employ all the arts which my dangerous
position had taught me, to quiet his alarm, and convince him that my
emotion sprang entirely from pleasure.

Meantime the orchestra was playing and the equipages were rolling up in
front. What he thought as the music filled the house and rose in
piercing melody to the very roof, I can not say. I thought how it was a
message of release to those weary and abused ones above; and, filled
with the sense of support which the presence of so many people in the
house gave me, I drew up my girlish figure in glad excitement and
prepared myself for the ordeal, visible and invisible, which awaited
me.

The next two hours form a blank in my memory. Standing under Mrs.
Ransome's picture (I would stand there), I received the congratulations
of the hundred or more people who were anxious to see Mr. Allison's
bride, and of the whole glittering pageant I remember only the whispered
words of Mrs. Vandyke as she passed with the rest:

"My dear, I take back what I said the other day about the effect of
marriage upon you. You are the most brilliant woman here, and Mr.
Allison the happiest of men."

This was an indication that all was going well. But what of the awful
morning hour that awaited us! Would that show him a happy man?

At last our guests were assembled, and I had an instant to myself.
Murmuring a prayer for courage, I slid from the room and ran up-stairs.
Here all was bustle also--a bustle I delighted in, for, with so many
people moving about, Mrs. Ransome and her daughter could pass out
without attracting more than a momentary attention.

Securing a bundle I had myself prepared, I glided up the second
staircase, and, after a moment's delay, succeeded in unlocking the door
and disappearing with my bundle into the fourth story. When I came down,
the key I had carried up was left behind me. The way for Mrs. Ransome's
escape lay open.

I do not think I had been gone ten minutes from the drawing-room. When I
returned there, it was to find the festivities at their height, and my
husband just on the point of missing me. The look which he directed
toward me pierced me to the he