e, the invitations had come wrongly engraved and she had had to
send them back and have them done over again. She was afraid I might be
superstitious about it, so she hadn't told me. She was very gentle and
sweet and tried to soothe me, and called me 'Betty,' the name my father
always had for me, and at last I went back to my room feeling quite
comfortable. She had said she always felt troubled for poor Bessemer,
that nobody could love him right, he was so homely, and now I was going
to make everything right by marrying him. She was going to try to forget
what I had done to poor dear Herbert, and just be happy about Bessemer.
She talked so nicely that I kissed her, a thing I hadn't done in years,
not since she was first married to father. But somehow the shock of
seeing Herbert's name on the invitation stayed with me, and I began to
feel gloomier about it all and to wonder if perhaps I had done right.
The last day I was terribly depressed and when I got to the church that
night it suddenly came to me that perhaps after all I was not going to
be free at all as I had hoped, but was just tying myself up to them all
for life. I was thinking that as I walked up the aisle, and my throat
had a big lump in it the way it always does when I am frightened, and
then I looked up hoping a glimpse of poor Bessemer's face would steady
me and he wasn't there at all! And right over me, waiting beside the
minister, to marry me stood _Herbert_! My knees just gave way under me,
and everything got black so I couldn't go on another step, nor even
stand up. I had to drop. I wasn't unconscious as you all thought--I
heard everything that went on, but I couldn't do anything about it.

"After they had carried me into the other room and given me things to
drink, and I could get my breath again I saw it all clearly. Herbert
hadn't given up at all. He meant to marry me anyway. He had had the
invitations printed with his name on purpose and they probably hadn't
been changed at all. Everybody in that great church out there was
_expecting_ me to marry Herbert Hutton, and I _was not going to do it_!
I didn't quite know how I was going to stop it, but I knew I had to! You
see I was brought up to think a great deal about what people would think
of me if I did anything out of the usual, and it seemed to me I had
disgraced myself forever by dropping down in the aisle. I knew Herbert
well enough to be sure he would carry that wedding through now if he had
to h