, inviting her and Malcolm to be present
at Carrie's wedding, purposely omitting the name of the bridegroom;
and three days before the appointed time they came. It was dark when
they arrived, and as they were not expected that night, they entered
the house before any one was aware of their presence. John Jr.
chanced to be in the hall, and the moment he saw Anna, he caught her
in his arms, shouting so uproariously that his father and mother at
once hastened to the spot.

"Will you forgive me, father ?" Anna said, and Mr. Livingstone
replied by clasping her to his bosom, while he extended his hand to
Malcolm.

"Where's Carrie?" Anna said, and John Jr. replied, "In the parlor,
with her future spouse. Shall I introduce you?"

So saying, he dragged her into the parlor, where she then recoiled in
terror as she saw Captain Atherton.

"Oh, Carrie!" she exclaimed. "It cannot be----that I see you again!"
she added, as she met her sister's warning look.

Another moment and they were in each other's arms weeping bitterly,
the one that her sister should thus throw herself away, and the
other, because she was wretched. It was but for an instant, however,
and then Carrie was herself again. Playfully presenting Anna to the
Captain, she said, "Ain't I good to take up with what you left!"

But no one smiled at this joke--the captain, least of all, and as
Carrie glanced from him to Malcolm, she felt that her sister had made
a happy choice. The next day 'Lena came, overjoyed to meet Anna, who
more than any one else, rejoiced in her good fortune.

"You deserve it all," she said, when they were alone, "and if Carrie
had one tithe of your happiness in store I should be satisfied."

But Carrie asked for no sympathy. "It was no one's business whom she
married," she said; and so one pleasant night in the early spring,
they decked her in her bridal robes, and then, white, cold, and
feelingless as a marble statue, she laid her hand in Captain
Atherton's, and took upon her the vows which made her his forever. A
few days after the ceremony, Carrie began to urge their immediate
departure for California.

"There was no need of further delay," she said. "No one cared to see
'Lena married. Weddings were stupid things, anyway, and her mother
could just as well go one time as another."

At first Mrs. Livingstone hesitated, but when Carrie burst into a
passionate fit of weeping, declaring "she'd kill herself if she had
to stay much