ut we talked a long time about it, and he
told me how lonely he had always been, and how nobody had ever loved
him, and he knew he wasn't attractive, and all that; and then he said
that if I married him we would go away and live by ourselves and he
would let me do just as I wanted to. He wouldn't bother me about
anything. If I didn't love him he would keep out of my sight, and things
like that, till I got very sorry for him, and began to think that
perhaps after all it was the best thing that would ever come for either
of us. So I said I would.

"It surprised me a little that my stepmother took it so calmly when we
told her. She cried a little, but did it very prettily, and kissed
Bessemer, and told him he was fortunate. Then she kissed me and said I
was a darling, and that she would be so happy if it only weren't for
poor dear Herbert.

"But after that they began to rush things for a grand wedding, and I let
them do it because I didn't see anything else in the world for me."

Betty raised her eyes and encountered the clear grave gaze of Reyburn
fixed on her, and the color flew into her cheeks:

"I know you think I'm dreadful," she said, shrinking. "I've thought so
myself a thousand times, but truly I didn't realize then what an awful
thing it would be to marry a man I didn't love. I only wanted to hurry
up and get it done before Herbert came home. They said he had been
called away by important business and might be at home any day. I gave
my consent to everything they wanted to do, and they fixed it all just
as they pleased. One thing that happened upset me terribly. When the
wedding invitations came home my stepmother carried them off to her
room. I was too sad to pay much attention anyway. But the next morning I
happened to be down in the kitchen looking over the papers that the maid
had taken down from the waste baskets to search for a missing letter and
there in the pile I found one of the invitations partly addressed and
flung aside, and the invitation was still in the envelope. I pulled it
out with a ghastly kind of curiosity to see how I looked on paper, and
there it read, Mrs. Charles Garland Stanhope invites you to be present
at the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth to _Mr. Herbert Hutton_!

"My heart just stood still. With the paper in my hand I rushed up to my
stepmother's room and demanded to know what that meant. She smiled and
said she was so sorry I had been annoyed that way, that that was a
mistak