she
comes."

Marcia turned with relief. He had not asked where Kate was gone, nor with
whom.

The Squire and Madam Schuyler greeted the arrival with elaborate welcome.
The Squire like Marcia seemed much annoyed that Kate had gone out. He kept
fuming back and forth from the window to the door and asking: "What did
she go out for to-night? She ought to have stayed at home!"

But Madam Schuyler wore ample satisfaction upon her smooth brow. The
bridegroom had arrived. There could be no further hitch in the ceremonies.
He had arrived a day before the time, it is true; but he had not found
_her_ unprepared. So far as she was concerned, with a few extra touches
the wedding might proceed at once. She was always ready for everything in
time. No one could find a screw loose in the machinery of her household.

She bustled about, giving orders and laying a bountiful supper before the
young man, while the Squire sat and talked with him, and Marcia hovered
watchfully, waiting upon the table, noticing with admiring eyes the
beautiful wave of his abundant hair, tossed back from his forehead. She
took a kind of pride of possession in his handsome face,--the far-removed
possession of a sister-in-law. There was his sunny smile, that seemed as
though it could bring joy out of the gloom of a bleak December day, and
there were the two dimples--not real dimples, of course, men never had
dimples--but hints, suggestions of dimples, that caught themselves when he
smiled, here and there like hidden mischief well kept under control, but
still merrily ready to come to the surface. His hands were white and firm,
the fingers long and shapely, the hands of a brain worker. The vision of
Hanford Weston's hands, red and bony, came up to her in contrast. She had
not known that she looked at them that day when he had stood awkwardly
asking if he might walk with her. Poor Hanford! He would ill compare with
this cultured scholarly man who was his senior by ten years, though it is
possible that with the ten years added he would have been quite worthy of
the admiration of any of the village girls.

The fruit cake and raspberry preserves and doughnuts and all the various
viands that Madam Schuyler had ordered set out for the delectation of her
guest had been partaken of, and David and the Squire sat talking of the
news of the day, touching on politics, with a bit of laughter from the
Squire at the man who thought he had invented a machine to draw carriages