more beautiful than I had ever seen her.

She greeted me with so radiant a smile that the spectators might have taken me for the bridegroom.

So deep was my emotion at seeing once more, and on so dramatic an occasion, the face whose image for so many months had haunted my dreams, that oblivious of all my surroundings, I could do nothing but gaze at her with an earnest and wistful (some might have called it stupid) look until her laugh—how [Pg 39]sweet and familiar it sounded!—recalled me to myself.

[Pg 39]

"Why, Frank, have you been in Germany so long that you have forgotten your native language? Speak to him in German, papa, and ask him if he is glad to see me."

I stammered out a few words of greeting. I do not remember what. The happiness of seeing her again was too great to allow of conventional conversation and I drew back while the development of the situation was being explained to her.

She was, of course, terribly disappointed by the turn events were taking, but her courage was splendid. Although in her eyes a marriage in a drawing-room was a less sacred ceremony than one within consecrated walls, she seemed less cast down by the prospect than did her bridesmaids who were being deprived of the chance of displaying their toilettes to the fashionable congregation of St. Cyprian's, and thus, in the probable absence of reporters, they would have to forego the pleasure of reading in the society papers the description of their finery.

"Well, Daphne, what do you say?" her father asked.

"Let George be sent for," she replied. "I will do just as he wishes."

In my anxiety to see and question George I was on the point of starting for the church myself, but my uncle detained me.

"No, no," he said. "Why should you expose yourself unnecessarily to this storm? Hall can go," and I had no option but to submit, and my uncle's valet was despatched with orders to bring back both Captain Willard and a clergyman.

Meantime Daphne with fine courage went about[Pg 40] among the guests, as if nothing unusual were happening. Presently she came up to me.

[Pg 40]

"Come and talk to me," she said. "It is so long since I saw you. I am sure you must have much to tell 

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