“You look as if you haven’t slept all night, dearie,” I said.

“I didn’t—­not a great deal,” she answered me.  “But the night didn’t seem long; no, it seemed too short.  I was thinking of a great many things.  What time is it, Aunt Rachel?”

“Five o’clock.”

“Then in six hours more—­”

She suddenly sat up in her bed, her great, thick rope of brown hair falling over her white shoulders, and flung her arms about me, and burst into tears on my old breast.  I petted and soothed her, and said not a word; and, after a while, she stopped crying; but she still sat with her head so that I couldn’t see her face.

“We didn’t think it would be like this once, did we, Aunt Rachel?” she said, very softly.

“It shouldn’t be like this, now,” I said.  I had to say it.  I never could hide the thought of that marriage, and I couldn’t pretend to.  It was all her stepmother’s doings—­right well I knew that.  My dearie would never have taken Mark Foster else.

“Don’t let us talk of that,” she said, soft and beseeching, just the same way she used to speak when she was a baby-child and wanted to coax me into something.  “Let us talk about the old days—­and HIM.”

“I don’t see much use in talking of HIM, when you’re going to marry Mark Foster to-day,” I said.

But she put her hand on my mouth.

“It’s for the last time, Aunt Rachel.  After to-day I can never talk of him, or even think of him.  It’s four years since he went away.  Do you remember how he looked, Aunt Rachel?”

“I mind well enough, I reckon,” I said, kind of curt-like.  And I did.  Owen Blair hadn’t a face a body could forget—­that long face of his with its clean color and its eyes made to look love into a woman’s.  When I thought of Mark Foster’s sallow skin and lank jaws I felt sick-like.  Not that Mark was ugly—­he was just a common-looking fellow.

“He was so handsome, wasn’t he, Aunt Rachel?” my dearie went on, in that patient voice of hers.  “So tall and strong and handsome.  I wish we hadn’t parted in anger.  It was so foolish of us to quarrel.  But it would have been all right if he had lived to come back.  I know it would have been all right.  I know he didn’t carry any bitterness against me to his death.  I thought once, Aunt Rachel, that I would go through life true to him, and then, over on the other side, I’d meet him just as before, all his and his only.  But it isn’t to be.”

“Thanks to your stepma’s wheedling and Mark Foster’s scheming,” said I.

“No, Mark didn’t scheme,” she said patiently.  “Don’t be unjust to Mark, Aunt Rachel.  He has been very good and kind.”

“He’s as stupid as an owlet and as stubborn as Solomon’s mule,” I said, for I WOULD say it.  “He’s just a common fellow, and yet he thinks he’s good enough for my beauty.”

“Don’t talk about Mark,” she pleaded again.  “I mean to be a good, faithful wife to him.  But I’m my own woman yet—­YET—­for just a few more sweet hours, and I want to give them to HIM.  The last hours of my maidenhood—­they must belong to HIM.”