for a moment no one thought of the donor.  Then their curiosity got the better of them and they began to search through the wrappings for the card.  It wasn’t in the box; it wasn’t hidden in the final bag; it wasn’t—­here a bright thought now flashed through the dear lady’s brain—­down went her shapely hand into the depths of the tall jar, and up came an envelope bearing Ruth’s name and enclosing a card which made the grande dame catch her breath.

“Mr. Isaac Cohen!  What—­the little tailor!” she gasped out.  “The Jew!  Well, upon my word—­did you ever hear of such impudence!”

Isaac would have laughed the harder could he have seen her face.

Jack caught up the vase and ran with it to Ruth, who burst out with another:  “Oh, what a beauty!” followed by “Who sent it?”

“A gentleman journeyman tailor, my darling,” said Jack, with a flash of his eye at Peter, his face wreathed in smiles.

And with the great day—­a soft November day—­summer had lingered on a-purpose—­came the guests:  the head of the house of Breen and his wife—­not poor Corinne, of course, who poured out her heart in a letter instead, which she entrusted to her mother to deliver; and Holker Morris and Mrs. Morris, and the Fosters and the Granthams and Wildermings and their wives and daughters and sons, and one stray general, who stopped over on his way to the West, and who said when he entered, looking so very grand and important, that he didn’t care whether he had been invited to the ceremony or not, at which Miss Felicia was delighted, he being a major-general on the retired list, and not a poor tailor who—­no, we won’t refer to that again; besides a very, very select portion of the dear lady’s townspeople—­the house being small, as she explained, and Miss MacFarlane’s intimates and acquaintances being both importunate and numerous.

And with the gladsome hour came the bride.

None of us will ever forget her.  Not only was she a vision of rare loveliness, but there was in her every glance and movement that stateliness and grace that poise and sureness of herself that marks the high-born woman the world over when she finds herself the cynosure of all eyes.

All who saw her descend Miss Felicia’s stairs held their breath in adoration:  Not a flight of steps at all. but a Jacob’s ladder down which floated a company of angels in pink and ivory—­one all in white, her lovely head crowned by a film of old lace in which nestled a single rose.

On she came—­slowly—­proudly—­her slippered feet touching the carpeted steps as daintily as treads a fawn; her gown crinkling into folds of silver about her knees, one fair hand lost in a mist of gauze, the other holding the blossoms which Jack had pressed to his lips—­until she reached her father’s side.

“Dear daddy,” I heard her whisper as she patted his sleeve with her fingers.

Ah! but it was a proud day for MacFarlane.  I saw his bronzed and weather-beaten face flush when he caught sight of her in all her gracious beauty; but it was when she reached his side and laid her hand on his arm, as he told me afterward, that the choke came.  She was so like her mother.