hall at the Gray home--as he came
into it a vivid memory flashed over Richard of his first entrance
there--less honoured than to-night! Soft lights shone upon him; the
spicy fragrance of the ropes and banks of Christmas "greens," bright
with holly, saluted his nostrils; and the glimpse of a great fire
burning, quite as usual, on the broad hearth of the living-room--a place
which had long since come to typify his ideal of a home--served to make
him feel that there could be no spot more suitable for the beginning of
a new home, because there could be nothing in the world finer or more
beautiful to model it upon.

Nothing seemed afterward clear in his memory until the moment when he
came from his room upstairs, with Hugh close behind him, and met the
rector of St. Luke's, who was to marry him. There followed a hazy
impression of a descent of the staircase, of coming from a detour
through the library out into the full lights and of standing
interminably facing a large gathering of people, the only face at which
he could venture to glance that of Judge Calvin. Gray, standing
dignified and stately beside another figure of equal dignity and
stateliness--probably that of Mr. Matthew Kendrick. Then, at last--there
was Roberta, coming toward him down a silken lane, her eyes fixed on
his--such eyes, in such a face! He fixed his own gaze upon it, and held
it--and forgot everything else, as he had hoped he should. Then there
were the grave words of the clergyman, and his own voice responding--and
sounding curiously unlike his own, of course, as the voice of the
bridegroom has sounded in his own ears since time began. Then
Roberta's--how clearly she spoke, bless her! Then, before he knew it, it
was done, and he and she were rising from their knees, and there were
smiles and pleasant murmurings all about them--and little Ruth was
sobbing softly with her cheek against his!

It was here that he became conscious again of the family--Roberta's
family, and of what it meant to have such people as these welcome him
into their circle. When he looked into the face of Roberta's mother and
felt her tender welcoming kiss upon his lips, his heart beat hard with
joy. When Roberta's father, his voice deep with feeling, said to him,
"Welcome to our hearts, my son," he could only grasp the firm hand with
an answering, passionate pressure which meant that he had at last that
which he had consciously or unconsciously longed for all his life. All
down