emand, she opened her chests of fine linen.

Rachael submitted. She dared not excite her mother. Her imagination,
always vivid though it was, refused to picture the end she dreaded; and
she never saw Levine alone. His descriptions of life in Copenhagen
interested her, and when her mother expatiated upon the glittering
destiny which awaited her, ambition and pride responded, although
precisely as they had done in her day dreams. She found herself
visioning Copenhagen, jewels, brocades, and courtiers; but she realized
only when she withdrew to St. Kitts, that Levine had not entered the
dream, even to pass and bend the knee. Often she laughed aloud in
merriment. As the wedding-day approached, she lost her breath more than
once, and her skin chilled. During the last few days before the ceremony
she understood for the first time that it was inevitable. But time--it
was now three months since the needlewomen were set at the
trousseau--and her unconscious acceptance of the horrid fact had trimmed
her spirit to philosophy, altered the habit of her mind. She saw her
mother radiant, received the personal congratulations of every family on
the Island. Her sisters came from St. Croix, and made much of the little
girl who was beginning life so brilliantly; beautiful silks and laces
had come from New York, and Levine had given her jewels, which she tried
on her maid every day because she thought the mustee's tawny skin
enhanced their lustre. She was but a child in spite of her intellect.
Her union with the Dane came to appear as one of the laws of life, and
she finished by accepting it as one accepted an earthquake or a
hurricane. Moreover, she was profoundly innocent.

V

Mary Fawcett accompanied the Levines to Copenhagen, but returned to St.
Christopher by a ship which left Denmark a month later, being one of
those women who picture their terrestrial affairs in a state of
dissolution while deprived of their vigilance. She vowed that the North
had killed her rheumatism, and turned an absent ear to Rachael's appeal
to tarry until Levine was ready to return to St. Croix. She remained
long enough in Denmark, however, to see her daughter presented at court,
and installed with all the magnificence that an ambitious mother could
desire. There was not a misgiving in her mind, for Rachael, if somewhat
inanimate, could not be unhappy with an uxorious husband and the world
at her feet; and although for some time after her marriage she had