of caressing touch, and brought to her hot eyelids a mist which cooled their feverish heat.  And now nothing remained of the treasures but a tiny tortoise-shell box, where, in its bed of pink cotton, lay a little ring, with “Ethie” marked upon it.  It was too small for the finger it once encircled, for Ethel was but a child when first she wore it.  Her hands were larger; plumper, now, and it would not pass the second joint of her finger, though she exerted all her strength to push it on, taking a kind of savage delight in the pain it caused her, and feeling that she was thus revenging herself on someone, she hardly knew or cared whom.  At last, however, with a quick, jerking motion she drew it off, and covering her face with her hands, moaned bitterly: 

“It hurts! it hurts! just as the bonds hurt which are closing around my heart.  Oh!  Frank, Frank, it was cruel to serve me so.”

There was a step in the hall below.  Aunt Barbara was coming to waken Ethelyn, and, with a spring, the young girl bounded to her feet, swept her hands twice across her face, and, shedding back from her forehead her wealth of bright brown hair, laughingly confronted the good woman, who, in the same breath, expressed her surprise that her niece was once up without being called, and her wonder at the peculiar odor pervading the apartment.

“Smells if all the old newspapers in the barrel up garret had been burnt at once,” she said; but the fireplace, which lay in shadow, told no tales, and Aunt Barbara never suspected the pain tugging at the heart of the girl, whose cheeks glowed with an unnatural red as she dashed hot water over neck, and arms, and face, playfully plashing a few large drops upon her aunt’s white apron, and asking if there was not an old adage, “Blessed is the bride the sun shines on.”  “If so, I must be greatly blessed,” she said, pushing open the eastern shutter, and letting in a flood of yellow sunlight.

“The day bids fair to be a scorcher.  I hope it will grow cool this evening.  A crowded party is so terrible when one feels hot and uncomfortable, and the millers and horn-bugs come in so thickly, and I always get so red in the face.  Please, auntie, you twist up my hair in a flat knot—­no matter how.  I don’t seem to have any strength in my arms this morning, and my head is all in a whirl.  It must be the weather,” and, with a long, panting breath, Ethelyn sank, half fainting, into a chair, while her frightened aunt ran for water, and camphor, and cologne, hoping Ethelyn was not coming down with fever, or any other dire complaint, on this her wedding day.

“It is the weather, most likely, and the awful amount of sewing you’ve done these last few weeks,” said Aunt Barbara; and Ethelyn suffered her to think so, though she herself had a far different theory with regard to that almost fainting fit, which served as an excuse for her unusual pallor, for her listless apathy, and her want of appetite, even for the flaky rolls, and the delicious strawberries, and thick, yellow cream which Aunt Barbara put before her.