d to be sorry for having written him that letter. Nothing, indeed,
had been farther from my thoughts than that it should be forwarded to
him. He wrote from Assumption, an island in the South Seas. If he was by
my side he could hardly save me, unless he could prove that Uncle Luke
was innocent of the things Garret Dawson attributed to him and could
prove it to the world. And how could he do that?

I had never asked what the secret was, feeling that it must be something
very terrible indeed when my grandfather would not tell it to Miss
Champion. I never meant to ask. Let the proof of it be given up and
forgotten. There was even a certain dreary pleasure in feeling that I
was going to save the Lord and Lady St. Leger from that disgrace. It was
not right the old should suffer and be afraid.

At last I put the letter inside my bodice and returned to the house. I
got upstairs unobserved and put it away in the tall, spindle-legged
Sheraton desk which has held all my girlish treasures. I was going to
destroy the two letters from Anthony Cardew presently. Then the old life
would be done with indeed.

"Bless me, child," said my grandmother, coming in on me as I closed the
desk, "what a colour you have! I have not seen you look so well this
many a day. What have you been doing to yourself?"

"Not rouging, Gran, I assure you," I said lightly. "I have been out in
the frosty air and it has made my cheeks tingle."

"Your wedding-dress has come home," she said, "and Richard is here. He
wants to see you in it, Bawn."

I remembered the superstition and wondered that she should have
suggested such a thing. If I had been going to marry Anthony Cardew I
should have refused, but since I was going to marry Richard Dawson I was
not fearful of omens.

"Very well," I said; "I shall put it on and come downstairs."

I had a young maid from Dublin, newly come to me, and she had not our
superstitions, or she was too respectful to oppose her will to mine.
Anyhow, she dressed me in my wedding-dress, the fine thing of white
silk, veiled with my grandmother's old Limerick lace and hung with
pearls. She had dressed my hair high, quickly and deftly, and when I had
on my wedding-dress she threw my wedding-veil over my head and fastened
it with the diamond stars which were among my lover's gifts to me. When
she had dressed me she wheeled the long mirror in front of me that I
might look at myself.

I was not the same girl to look on that I had been