d; he had pronounced judgment upon her, and she confessed to
herself that she was guilty as charged. That was the worst of it; she
could pronounce herself guilty, and yet resent the justice of her own
decision.

In her desperation, she tried to hold old Mr. Thorpe responsible for the
fresh canker that gnawed at her soul. But for that encounter in his
library, she might have proceeded with confidence instead of the
uneasiness that now attended her every step. She could not free herself of
the fear that Braden might after all succeed in his efforts to persuade
the old man to change his mind. True, the contract was signed, but
contracts are not always sacred. They are made to be broken. Moreover, by
no stretch of the imagination could this contract be looked upon as sacred
and it certainly would not look pretty if exposed to a court of law. Her
sole thought now was to have it all safely over with. Then perhaps she
could smile once more.

In the home of the bridegroom, preparations for the event were scant and
of a perfunctory nature. Mr. Templeton Thorpe ordered a new suit of
clothes for himself--or, to be quite precise, he instructed Wade to order
it. He was in need of a new suit anyway, he said, and he had put off
ordering it for a long, long time, not because he was parsimonious but
because he did not like going up town for the "try-on." He also had a new
silk hat made from his special block, and he would doubtless be compelled
to have his hair trimmed up a bit about the nineteenth or twentieth, if
the weather turned a trifle warmer. Of course, there would be the trip to
City Hall with Anne, for the licence. He would have to attend to that in
person. That was one thing that Wade couldn't do for him. Wade bought the
wedding-ring and saw to the engraving; he attended to the buying of a gift
for the best man,--who under one of the phases of an all-enveloping irony
was to be George Dexter Tresslyn!--and in the same expedition to the
jewellers' purchased for himself a watch-fob as a self-selected gift from
a master who had never given him anything in all his years of service
except his monthly wage and a daily malediction.

Braden Thorpe made the supreme effort to save his grandfather. Believing
himself to be completely cured of his desire for Anne, he took the stand
that there was no longer a necessity for the old gentleman to sacrifice
himself to the greed of the Tresslyns. But Mr. Thorpe refused to listen to
this new an