k I do just. Clean dazed with happiness!"

"Poor Mury!" said Cornelia, again. She looked across the room at the
flushed, ecstatic face of the prospective bride, and smiled with tender
sympathy.

"I'm real glad you're pleased. To-night, just as soon as dinner's over,
you must go out and tell your friend. I'll fix it up with Aunt Soph.
You'll have a fine time, won't you? He won't believe it's true, but
you'll _make_ him believe, and be as happy as grigs walking round and
planning out that parlour. Come into my room when you get back and tell
me what he says. I shan't be asleep!"

There seemed no time for sleep during the next few days. The mornings
were devoted to packing, and to long confidential interviews with Elma;
the afternoons to a succession of tea-parties, to which every old lady
in Norton was bidden in turns, to say the same things, and breathe the
same pious good wishes; the evenings to decorous cribbage matches with
her aunt; the nights--the nights were Cornelia's own secret, but they
left a wan, heavy-eyed damsel to yawn at the breakfast-table each
morning.

When the last hour arrived, the very last, Cornelia's friends assembled
at the station to bid her good-bye; Miss Briskett, tall and angular in
her new grey costume; Mrs Ramsden with the black feather fiercely erect
in the front of her bonnet; lovely, blooming Elma attended by her swain,
and in the background the faithful Mary, holding on to the dressing-bag,
and sniffing dolorously. Cornelia had refused to be escorted farther on
the journey, and now that the hour had arrived, her one longing was to
say her farewells and be left to herself.

She was eager to be off, yet, when the train steamed slowly out of the
station, she was gripped by a strange, swift spasm of anguish. Not on
her friends' behalf. Aunt Soph had made no pretence of anything beyond
polite regret. Elma and Mary shared a personal happiness so deep, that,
for the time at least, the departure of a friend held no lasting sting.
Cornelia could wave adieu to each, rejoicing in their joy, in the
remembrance that she had had some small share in bringing it about; yet
the torturing pain continued, the desolating ache of disappointment.

What was it for which she had waited? What hope had lived persistent at
the back of her mind, while she had pretended that she had no hope? She
knew now that, hour by hour, she had lived in the expectation of Guest's
return; had felt an unreassur