persistence was as irritating as her mother's.

"I told you it was frightfully hot--and all my things were horrid; and
it made me so cross and nervous!" She turned to the looking-glass with a
feint of smoothing her hair.

Marvell laid his hand on her arm, "I can't bear to see you so done up.
Why can't we be married to-morrow, and escape all these ridiculous
preparations? I shall hate your fine clothes if they're going to make
you so miserable."

She dropped her hands, and swept about on him, her face lit up by a new
idea. He was extraordinarily handsome and appealing, and her heart began
to beat faster.

"I hate it all too! I wish we COULD be married right away!"

Marvell caught her to him joyously. "Dearest--dearest! Don't, if you
don't mean it! The thought's too glorious!"

Undine lingered in his arms, not with any intent of tenderness, but as
if too deeply lost in a new train of thought to be conscious of his
hold.

"I suppose most of the things COULD be got ready sooner--if I said they
MUST," she brooded, with a fixed gaze that travelled past him. "And the
rest--why shouldn't the rest be sent over to Europe after us? I want to
go straight off with you, away from everything--ever so far away,
where there'll be nobody but you and me alone!" She had a flash of
illumination which made her turn her lips to his.

"Oh, my darling--my darling!" Marvell whispered.

X

Mr. and Mrs. Spragg were both given to such long periods of ruminating
apathy that the student of inheritance might have wondered whence Undine
derived her overflowing activity. The answer would have been obtained
by observing her father's business life. From the moment he set foot
in Wall Street Mr. Spragg became another man. Physically the change
revealed itself only by the subtlest signs. As he steered his way to his
office through the jostling crowd of William Street his relaxed muscles
did not grow more taut or his lounging gait less desultory. His
shoulders were hollowed by the usual droop, and his rusty black
waistcoat showed the same creased concavity at the waist, the same
flabby prominence below. It was only in his face that the difference was
perceptible, though even here it rather lurked behind the features than
openly modified them: showing itself now and then in the cautious glint
of half-closed eyes, the forward thrust of black brows, or a tightening
of the lax lines of the mouth--as the gleam of a night-watchman's light
might f