“Have you anything more to say to me?” she asked, turning to the servant, with her hand on the door.

“I beg your pardon, miss,” said Louisa, very respectfully and very quietly.  “I think my master told me that the marriage was to be to-morrow?”

Magdalen repressed the shudder that stole over her at that reference to the marriage on the lips of a stranger, and answered in the affirmative.

“It’s a very short time, miss, to prepare in.  If you would be so kind as to give me my orders about the packing before you go downstairs—?”

“There are no such preparations to make as you suppose,” said Magdalen, hastily.  “The few things I have here can be all packed at once, if you like.  I shall wear the same dress to-morrow which I have on to-day.  Leave out the straw bonnet and the light shawl, and put everything else into my boxes.  I have no new dresses to pack; I have nothing ordered for the occasion of any sort.”  She tried to add some commonplace phrases of explanation, accounting as probably as might be for the absence of the usual wedding outfit and wedding-dress.  But no further reference to the marriage would pass her lips, and without an other word she abruptly left the room.

The meek and melancholy Louisa stood lost in astonishment.  “Something wrong here,” she thought.  “I’m half afraid of my new place already.”  She sighed resignedly, shook her head, and went to the wardrobe.  She first examined the drawers underneath, took out the various articles of linen laid inside, and placed them on chairs.  Opening the upper part of the wardrobe next, she ranged the dresses in it side by side on the bed.  Her last proceeding was to push the empty boxes into the middle of the room, and to compare the space at her disposal with the articles of dress which she had to pack.  She completed her preliminary calculations with the ready self-reliance of a woman who thoroughly understood her business, and began the packing forthwith.  Just as she had placed the first article of linen in the smaller box, the door of the room opened, and the house-servant, eager for gossip, came in.

“What do you want?” asked Louisa, quietly.

“Did you ever hear of anything like this!” said the house-servant, entering on her subject immediately.

“Like what?”

“Like this marriage, to be sure.  You’re London bred, they tell me.  Did you ever hear of a young lady being married without a single new thing to her back?  No wedding veil, and no wedding breakfast, and no wedding favors for the servants.  It’s flying in the face of Providence—­that’s what I say.  I’m only a poor servant, I know.  But it’s wicked, downright wicked—­and I don’t care who hears me!”

Louisa went on with the packing.

“Look at her dresses!” persisted the house-servant, waving her hand indignantly at the bed.  “I’m only a poor girl, but I wouldn’t marry the best man alive without a new gown to my back.  Look here! look at this dowdy brown thing here.  Alpaca!  You’re not going to pack this Alpaca thing, are you?  Why, it’s hardly fit for a servant!  I don’t know that I’d take a gift of it if it was offered me.  It would do for me if I took it up in the skirt, and let it out in the waist—­and it wouldn’t look so bad with a bit of bright trimming, would it?”