r stranger would so secretly assist me. I am
bound up in the fear and wonder that it is my husband."

"That does beat conjecture," said old Mrs. Tilghman. "Have you no friend
you might suspect?"

"None," the widow answered. "None who have not worn out their means of
giving long ago. Can I marry, with this ghostly visitation coming so
regularly? Should I not have faith in a husband's living if I receive a
wife's care from an unseen hand?"

"Oden Dennis," Mrs. Custis remarked, "was hardly a man to do charity and
not be seen. He was rather self-indulgent, demonstrative, and restless.
I cannot think of his nocturnal visits in the body. Besides, he would
not supply you in that way, Norah, if he meant to come back; and if he
cannot himself come to you, neither could he send."

Not altogether relishing Mrs. Tilghman's reproof, Rhoda was again heard
from, saying:

"Lord sakes! all the women has to talk about when they is gone is the
men. When the men comes, they talks as if they never missed of 'em. Misc
Somers, she never had no man, an' she talks mos' about the women that
has got one. I think Aunt Vesty has got the best man in Prencess Anne.
He's the richest. He's the freest. He never courted no other gal. He
ain't got no quar old women runnin' of him down--caze Misc Somers is
dreffle afraid of him!" This last remark seemed apologetic and an
afterthought.

"I am beginning to think my fortune is better than I deserve," Vesta
replied, to soften the application, as wine, tea, and cake were brought
in. "Now, dear friends, as I am Mr. Milburn's wife, let us all be
Christians this Sunday night, and drink his health and happy recovery,
and that he may never repent his marriage."

They drank with some hesitation, except the bride, Rhoda, and Mrs.
Dennis. Mrs. Tilghman needed the wine too much to wait long, and Mrs.
Custis, finding she was observed, took a sip from her glass also,
excusing herself on the ground of a recent headache from drinking
heartily.

As the conversation proceeded, now by general participation, again by
couples apart, and Vesta found herself more and more a subject of
sympathy, with no little curiosity interwoven in it, she also imagined
that an undertone of belief was abroad that she had made a mercenary
marriage.

Old Mrs. Tilghman--in her prime a most caustic belle, and worldly as
three marriages, all shrewdly contracted, could make her--seemed
determined to hold that Vesta had rejected her grandson