then,' replies Jimmy. 'The leafy month of June.'

CHAPTER XI

'Thee will I love and reverence, evermore.'

--AUBREY DE VERE.

'There, Mab, I really can't write any more,' and throwing down her pen,
regardless that it is full of ink, and that it alights on a photograph
of Teddy, thereby giving him a black eye, Miss Seaton rises from the
writing-table and flings herself into an armchair.

'Well, dear,' says Mabel, 'I said I would do them for you, after you are
gone to-morrow, look at these little china figures, I don't believe
you've glanced at them, they came from old Mrs Boothly and I fancy they
are real Sevres--?'

'At it still,' interrupts George, poking his head in at the door, 'what
it is to be on the eve of a wedding; I suppose you'll want a detective,
and, oh, by the bye where are we going to dine?'

'In your room, I thought,' replies his wife, 'you see you can go to the
club, and we shall not want much.'

'Fasting before a festival, I suppose,' says he; 'or perhaps you are
afraid you will not be able to get into that new gown of yours.'

'How do you know anything about my new gown,' asks Mabel.

George laughs, 'I happened to see it put out for inspection in your
room.'

'My room, what were you doing there?' begins Mabel, but he has
departed.

'What can he have been doing?' she says.

'Go and see,' suggests Lippa, and Mabel filled with curiosity, hastens
upstairs, but returns again in a minute.

'Look, what the dear thing has given me,' she cries, holding up a little
blue velvet case, 'I must go and thank him,' and down she goes to the
smoking-room, 'George, you dear old boy,' she says, hugging him round
the neck, 'isn't it lovely,' she goes on, turning to Philippa who has
followed her.

'It is indeed,' says she, carefully examining the moonstone set in
diamonds. 'Did you choose it yourself, George?'

'Didn't give me credit for so much taste, eh?'

'No, I don't think I did,' replies Lippa, quietly slipping out of the
room.

She wants to be alone, to think a little, it all seems so strange and
lovely; this time to-morrow she will be Mrs Dalrymple--Mrs Dalrymple!
how funny it sounds--and Jimmy will be all her own, and they will go
away together;--and she sinks into a dream of delight, seeing the future
only as a golden mist through which she and her husband will pass side
by side. And she suddenly falls upon her knees, and buries her golden
head in her hands, and breathes