’Married! almost before the crape is off the door, or the flowers wilted on Maude’s grave!  Well, that shows how little we are missed; and I am not surprised, though I think Maude would be, at Harold, certainly.  I suppose you know there was something between them; but a man will do any thing for money.  I wish you joy of your husband.’

Jerrie was too indignant to explain any thing, and hurried off in quest of her uncle, whom she found in Maude’s room, where he spent the most of his time, walking up and down and examining the different articles which had belonged to his daughter, and which, at his request, remained untouched as she had left them.  Her brushes, her comb, her bottled perfumery, her work-box, her Bible, a little half-finished sketch, and her soft bed-slippers she had worn when she died, and one of which he held in his hand when Jerrie went in to him.

‘It is so like Maude,’ he said, with quivering lips, as she went to his side, ’and when I hold it in my hand I can almost hear the dear little feet, which I know are cold and dead, coming along the hall as she used to come, and will never come again.  I think I should like to die here in this room and go where Maude has gone, and I believe I should go there.  I am sure God has forgiven me, and Maude forgave me, too, for I told her.’

‘You did!  I thought so,’ Jerrie said.

‘Yes, I had to tell her,’ he continued, ’and I am glad I did, and she loved me just the same.  You saw her die.  You heard what she said to me.  She must have believed in me, and that keeps me from going mad.  I told Dolly, too; the shadow was so black I had to; and she said she’d never speak to me again as long as she lived, and she didn’t either until last night, when I was alone in here, crying on Maude’s bed; then she came to me and called me Frank, and said she was sorry she had been so hard, and asked me what we were going to do, and where we were going.  I’m sure I don’t know; do you?’

He was so broken, so like a child in his appeal to her, that Jerrie’s tears came fast as she told him of her approaching marriage and what her father intended doing for him.  Then Frank broke down entirely, and cried like a child.

’I don’t deserve it, and I know I owe it to you, whom I have injured so much,’ he said, while Jerrie tried to comfort him.

‘I must go back now to father,’ she said at last; and, with a kiss upon his worn face, she went out into the hall, where she encountered Tom just coming from his mother’s room.

‘Hallo!’ Tom cried, with an attempt at a smile, ’and so you are going to marry Harold?’

‘Yes, Tom; I’m going to marry Harold,’ Jerrie replied, unhesitatingly, as she laid her hand on Tom’s arm and walked with him down the stairs.

It seemed to her the most natural thing in the world that she should marry Harold, and she was not at all abashed in speaking of it to Tom; but when outside they saw Harold coming up the walk, the color rushed to her cheeks, and her eyes grew wondrously bright with the love-light which shown in them, as she dropped Tom’s arm and hurried to Harold’s side.