and useful girl she was. I need not say
how sorry we are for this accident: I have sent for the physician: but
I cannot but be glad that the misfortune has at least given me the
opportunity of telling you how highly your wife was valued and respected
here."

At this juncture, Grace opened her eyes: she looked from one face to
another, and knew that fate had brought the truth to light. But the
physical shock tempered the severity of the mental one: besides, she
could not help being pleased at the sight of so many well-remembered and
friendly faces; and, finally, her husband did not look by any means so
angry and scandalized as she had feared he would. Indeed, he appeared
almost gratified. The truth probably was, he was flattered to see his
wife the centre of so much interest and attention, and at the discovery
that she had been in some way an honored appanage of so imposing an
establishment. So, by the time Grace was well enough to be driven back
to her hotel, the senor was prattling cheerfully and familiarly with all
and sundry, and was promising to bring his wife back there the next day,
to talk over old times with her former associates.

Such was Grace's punishment: it was not very severe; but then her fault
had been a venial one; and the episode was of much moral benefit to her.
She liked her husband all the better for having nothing more to conceal
from him; her vanity was rebuked, and her false pride chastened;
and when, in after-years, her pretty daughters and black-haired sons
gathered about her knees, she was wont to warn them sagely against the
un-American absurdity of fearing to work for their living, or being
ashamed to have it known.

But the married life of Miriam and Harvey Freeman was characteristically
American in its happiness. The representatives of the oldest and of the
latest inhabitants of this continent, their union seemed to produce the
flower of what was best in both. Their wedding is still remembered in
that region, as being everything that a Southern Californian wedding
should be; and the bride, as she stood at the altar, looked what she
was,--one of those women who, more than anything else in this world,
are fitted to bring back to earth the gentle splendors of the Garden
of Eden. In her dark eyes, as she fixed them upon Freeman, there was
a mystic light, telling of fathomless depths of tenderness and
intelligence: it seemed to her husband that love had expanded and
uplifted her; or perhaps