er casements, stretches out her arms to the
moonlight and bathes her white face and whiter neck in the cool flood
that drenches all the quiet garden.

There is peace everywhere, and rest, and happy sleep, but not for
Marcia; for days, for weeks, she has been haunted by the fear that
Philip's affection for her is but a momentary joy, that, swiftly as the
minutes fly, so it dwindles. To-night this fear is strong upon her.

Not by his word, not by his actions, but by the subtle nothings that,
having no name, yet are, and go to make up the dreaded whole, has this
thought been forced upon her. The cooling glance, the suppressed
restlessness, the sudden lack of conversation, the kind but unloving
touch, the total absence of a lover's jealousy,--all go to prove the
hateful truth. And now her grandfather's sneer of the morning comes
back to torture her and make assurance doubly sure. Yet hardly three
months have passed since Philip Shadwell asked her to be his wife.

"Already his love wanes," she murmurs, turning up her troubled face and
eyes, too sad for tears, to the starry vault above her, where the small
luminous bodies blink and tremble and take no heed of a ridiculous
love-tale, more or less. Her tone is low and despairing; and as she
speaks she beats her hands together slowly, noiselessly, yet none the
less passionately.

In vain she tries to convince herself her doubts are groundless, to
compel herself to believe her arms are full, when in her heart she
knows she but presses to her bosom an empty, fleeting shadow. The
night's dull vapors have closed upon her, and, while exaggerating her
misery, still open her eyes with kind cruelty to the end that surely
awaits her.

So she sits hugging her fears until the day breaks, and early morning,
peeping in at her, wafts her a kiss as it flies over the lawn and field
and brooklet. Then, wearied by her watching, she flings herself upon
her bed, and, gaining a short but dreamless sleep, wakens refreshed, to
laugh at her misgivings of the night before,--at her grandfather's
hints,--at aught that speaks to her of Philip's falseness.

Despair follows closely upon night. Hope comes in the train of day. And
Marcia, standing erect before her glass, with her beautiful figure
drawn to its full height and her handsome head erect, gazes long and
earnestly at the reflection therein. At last the deep flush of
satisfaction dyes her cheeks; all her natural self-reliance and
determination