called out, "To
Worcester, Mike--to Worcester, as fast as you can drive."

"To Worcester! For what?" asked Maggie, and the excited woman
answered: "To stop it! To forbid the banns! I should think you'd ask
for what!"

"To stop it," repeated Maggie. "I'd like to see you stop it, when
they've been married two months!"

"So they have! so they have!" said Madam Conway, wringing her hands
in her despair, and crying out that a Conway should be so disgraced.
"What shall I do? What shall I do?"

"Make the best of it, of course," answered Maggie. "I don't see
that George is any worse for his parentage. He is evidently greatly
respected in Worcester, where his family are undoubtedly known. He is
educated and refined, if they are not. Theo loves him, and that is
sufficient, unless I add that he has money."

"But not as much as I supposed," moaned Madam Conway. "Theo told me
two hundred thousand dollars; but that woman said one. Oh, what will
become of me! Give me the hartshorn, Maggie. I feel so faint!"

The hartshorn was handed her, but it could not quiet her distress.
Her family pride was sorely wounded, and had Theo been dead she would
hardly have felt worse than she did.

"How will she bear it when it comes to her knowledge, as it
necessarily must? It will kill her, I know!" she exclaimed, after
Maggie had exhausted all her powers of reasoning in vain; then, as
she remembered the woman's avowed intention of visiting her
daughter-in-law on the morrow, she felt that she must turn back; she
must see Theo and break it to her gently, or the first sight of that
odious creature, claiming her for a daughter, might be of incalculable
injury.

"Stop, Mike," she was about to say; but ere the words passed her lips
she reflected that to take Maggie back to Worcester was to throw her
again in Henry Warner's way, and this she could not do. There was
but one alternative. She could stop at the Charlton depot, not far
distant, and wait for the downward train, while Mike drove Maggie
home; and this she resolved to do. Mike was accordingly bidden to take
her at once to the depot, which he did, while she explained to Maggie
her reason for returning.

"Theo is much better alone, and George will not thank you for
interfering," said Maggie, not at all pleased with her grandmother's
proceedings.

But the old lady was determined. It was her duty, she said, to stand
by Theo in trouble; and if a visit from that horrid creature wasn't
troub