as really going to be married soon after
Christmas, and what Liz was going to wear, how Dorothea was coming down
to be married from Wigfield House, to please "sister," and how it would
all be such fun--"Only three weeks, Laura dear, to the delightful day!"
Finally, how Dorothea had arrived--and oh, such a lovely _trousseau_!
and she had never looked half so sweet and pretty before, "and in four
days, dear, the wedding is to be; eighty people to breakfast--only
think! and you shall be told all about it."

Laura felt herself slightly injured when, a week after this, she had not
been told anything. She felt even surprised when another week passed,
and yet there was silence; but at the end of it, she came rushing one
morning into Amelia's room, quite flushed from excitement, and with an
open letter in her hand.

"They're not married at all," she exclaimed, "Valentine and Miss Graham!
There has been no wedding, and there is none coming off. Valentine has
jilted her."

"Nonsense," cried Mrs. Melcombe. "You must be dreaming--things had gone
so far," and she sat down, feeling suddenly weak from amazement.

"But it is so," repeated Laura, "here is the whole account, I tell you.
When the time came he never appeared."

"What a disgraceful shame!" exclaimed Amelia, and Laura proceeded to
read to her this long-expected letter:--

"Dearest Laura,--I don't know how to begin, and I hardly know what to
tell you, because I am so ashamed of it all; and I promised to give you
an account of the wedding, but I can't. What will you think when I tell
you that there was none? Valentine never came. I told you that Dorothea
was in the house, but that he had gone away to take leave of various
friends, because, after the wedding, they were to sail almost
immediately, and so,--I must make short work with this, because I hate
it to that degree. There was the great snowstorm, as you know, and when
he did not come home we thought he must be blocked up somewhere, and
then we were afraid he was very ill. At last when still it snowed, and
still he did not come, Giles went in search of him, and it was not till
the very day before the wedding that he got back, having found out the
whole detestable thing.

"Poor Val! and we used to think him such a dear fellow. Of course I
cannot help being fond of him still, but, Laura, he has disgracefully
attached himself to another girl; he could not bear to come home and be
married, and he knew St. George would