en't
getting married for their benefit. Leave that to me. The papers will
announce that I've got to go to Europe--and that because of a turn in
your mother's condition you've decided to defer the wedding until I come
back. That's all they need to know."

He turned to the window and after a minute wheeled suddenly back.

"I have one thing still to ask. I have no longer any claim, of course.
But until three months have passed--you won't send for Boone Wellver,
will you?"

The girl's head came up with a tilted chin.

"I shall never send for him," she vehemently declared. "He's done with
me and that's all there is to it!"

It was not undiluted fiction which Morgan gave to the morning papers
that night, as he regretfully reported the sudden heart attack of Mrs.
Masters, which necessitated an eleventh hour postponement of his
wedding. There had been a heart attack which might have been averted had
the good lady been able to receive his tidings with a less flurried
spirit, but that he did not regard it necessary to explain, and a flinty
something in his eye discouraged unnecessary questions.

So Morgan set out alone on the trip which was to have been a honeymoon,
and the lady whose dreams of a rehabilitated place in society had been
dashed afforded her daughter a fulness of anxiety by hanging
precariously between life and death.

It is doubtful whether those circles in which Anne and Morgan moved were
wholly beguiled, and it is certain that sympathy followed the traveller.

"The engagement will never be renewed," mused an elderly lady who had
been fond of Anne from childhood. "She won't take up again with her wild
man of the mountains either, you may rest assured of that."

"But why?" challenged the gentleman to whom these sage observations were
addressed. "Presumably a persistent interest in young Wellver caused
this break with--"

A quiet laugh interrupted him, and the gentleman's eyes for some reason
grew grave. He and the woman with whom he talked had been lovers once,
engaged years upon years ago, and society had always wondered that
neither of them had ever married. Now with snow upon both their heads he
still sedately marched where he had once danced attendance upon her.

"Because," she soberly replied, "there is such a thing as letting the
psychological moment go by. Life isn't all mating season."

"As to that," he entered dignified demurrer, "we have always disagreed."

The lady, ignoring the observatio