This was Elizabeth's last thought that night; it was her first in the morning. She dressed herself carefully, putting on white, according to the custom which had aroused Aunt Rebecca's criticism; and all the while she asked of the reflection that stared back at her with perplexed eyes out of the mirror: "Shall I go, or shall I not?" She put the question to a rose when she got down-stairs, repeating as she ruthlessly destroyed each petal. "Yes, no, yes, no?" But the flower answered with a "no," and she threw away the last petal in disgust.

"I think I shall drive over to The Mills this morning," she announced quietly at the breakfast-table. "There is some ribbon I want to match." Her aunts looked up startled. They wondered simultaneously at what hour Halleck was to leave for New York. Yet what if after all the child wished for one last meeting?

"You don't think it's—it's too hot to go over there to-day, my dear?" Miss Cornelia ventured at last uncertainly.

"No, I don't mind the heat," Elizabeth answered indifferently, as she sat playing with her knife and fork. She was very pale and had no appetite. This seemed to them only natural. They hoped that when the young man were once out of the way, their darling would be herself again.

"We must take her to the sea-shore for a little while," Miss Cornelia observed when Elizabeth had left the room. "She needs change of air." Miss Joanna cheerfully assented. The idea and the sacrifice which it involved (since to go away from home, even for a few weeks, seemed a terrible undertaking) consoled them both greatly.

And meanwhile Elizabeth went her own way. It was not till she was seated in the carriage about to start on her drive, that she observed as if by an afterthought: "Oh, by the way, if I can't match the ribbon at The Mills, I may go to Cranston for it by the trolley, so don't be worried if I don't come back till late, and don't wait dinner." Her aunts looked at one another questioningly; but she drove off at once, before they could offer any objections.

And so Elizabeth drove towards Bassett Mills. The day was dry and hot, as were most days that summer. The sun beat down out of a brazen sky, the roads were white with dust, the grass in the fields was sere and brown. The locusts all along the way kept up a loud, exultant song, the burden of which was heat.

To Elizabeth, as she drove on, there began to be something ominous in it all; in the heat and the dust and the dazzling sunshine and the locusts with their eternal noise. They seemed all part, and she with them of some horrible nightmare; she was under some spell which benumbed her, deprived her of the capacity for thought, of all but the power to keep doggedly on the way to Bassett Mills. What she should do when she got there she did not know; her brain was torpid, there was a strange ringing in her ears. It was the sun, no doubt, that was affecting her head; it would be wise to turn back, or she might be ill. But still she kept on.

It was not far from noon when she reached Bassett Mills. There was little life about the place this hot morning; the mill-stream even seemed to dash less tumultuously, and showed signs of running dry. A group of men stood outside the drug-store, which was a great meeting-place, and discussed the drought. It was decided that if it continued the crops would be ruined; but hopes were founded on the fact that prayers for rain were to be offered in all the churches on Sunday.

"But there's not much use praying for rain," said one skeptic, "when the wind's due west."

Elizabeth heard the words as she drove up, and, alighting tied the white pony to a post and bribed a small boy to "keep an eye" on him. Then she joined the group in front of the shop, who were some waiting for the trolley, others merely passing the time of day. She did not go into the dry-goods shop to try to match her ribbon; she knew that such ribbon as she wanted was not to be had at Bassett Mills. She stood idly listening to the men's conversation, and wondering if it were indeed true, as the skeptic had declared, that it was useless to pray for an event already determined by natural causes. She had been brought up to believe implicitly in the efficacy of prayer, and had added to her usual formula that morning a petition of unwonted fervor that she might be enabled in this perplexing situation to decide for the best. But perhaps there was no use in praying; perhaps one was not a free agent. Fate, she thought, had evidently determined that she should go to Cranston that morning to be married, since it was a thing that might so easily have been prevented—by an objection from her aunts, an offer of company on the expedition, even by the white pony going lame; she would have yielded, or so she thought, to the merest trifle, glad to have the decision taken out of her hands. But everything had been made easy; it evidently was to be. And an implicit believer in heredity might have observed that the matter had been decided for her, by events and influences which had moulded her character even before she was born. It was in just such clandestine fashion as this that her parents had once gone up to Cranston to be married; and it might be that some mysterious hereditary instinct, some force over which she had no control, was now constraining their daughter, under the same circumstances, to act in the same way.

Elizabeth, fortunately or otherwise, did not think of this. She only knew that she was standing outside the drug-store with the other loiterers, straining her eyes along the dusty white road for a sight of the trolley; and that, even while she doubted the wisdom of waiting, some fascination held her rooted to the spot. When the trolley came she took her seat at once. After all a trip to Cranston meant nothing; she might simply buy her ribbon and come back.

The trolley started off fast and jerkily, creating a teasing wind, that seemed to blow from some fiery furnace. Elizabeth clutched her hat with one hand, while with the other she tried to shield her eyes from the flying dust and glare. Soon they were past the cemetery and the straggling outskirts of Bassett Mills, out into the open country, with rolling meadow and upland on either side, all withered, scorching under the sun's fierce rays. An occasional wagon met them, wrapped in a cloud of dust; the trolley was hailed now and then from some solitary farm-house, and came to a sudden stop. The ride seemed endless, but that they were approaching Cranston was at last made evident by unmistakable signs; by the advertisements staring at them from trunks of trees and the expanse of stone walls; by the asphalt pavement that succeeded the rough country road, the increasing quantity of bicycles, carriages and dust; and finally by the neat rows of Queen Anne villas, with their gabled fronts and terraced gardens sloping to the road. Then the car, with a last triumphant jerk, turned a corner and landed its passengers squarely in the High Street of Cranston.

Elizabeth alighted rather limply, and stood looking about her in a dazed sort of way. A country woman laden with parcels addressed her timidly. "Excuse me miss," she said, "but would you tell me the best place to go for stockings?"

Elizabeth started and stared at her, as if the simple question had been put in Hebrew. Then in a moment she recovered herself and directed the woman very civilly. She watched her bustle off upon her round of errands, then turned and slowly walked into the confectioner's shop. It was there that she had promised to meet Paul.

There was no one, as it happened, in the front part of the shop, where candy and cake were sold; no one in the little restaurant at the back. Elizabeth sat down at one of the small marble-topped tables; her head was aching, her eyes blood-shot, she was conscious of nothing but a feeling of pleasure in the coolness and darkness, of relief from the outside glare. Mechanically, she glanced at the small mirror, that hung at an unbecoming angle opposite on the wall, and felt a slight shock at the sight of herself—pale, worn, with blood-shot eyes, her white gown dusty and bedraggled. No, she did not look well—she had never looked worse in her life. Her lips curled in an unmirthful smile, as she thought irrelevantly of Aunt Rebecca, and of how she might have held forth on the folly of wearing white for such a dusty ride. And thereupon with a sudden pang, came the thought of Amanda—Amanda, tossing no doubt just then in the delirium of fever. The unpleasant idea struck Elizabeth of a resemblance between her own white face in the mirror, and her cousin's face as she had last seen it, with those staring, red-rimmed eyes. Certainly, there was a latent family likeness; but it took unbecoming conditions such as these to bring it out. She wondered languidly if any one else had ever noticed it.

Poor Amanda! Was she still, in her delirium, fretting over Paul? Or was she, perhaps, secure in Elizabeth's promise, and the pleasure of having separated them? What would she think if she knew that Elizabeth was even now waiting for him here in Cranston—waiting to be married to him? But with this thought the spell of indifference which had rested upon Elizabeth seemed suddenly to fall away, and there swept over her a sudden sense of revolt, of shame and repulsion. She started impulsively to her feet. No, she could not be married—not in that way; it was clandestine, disgraceful. There was still time to escape. If only she could reach home, without seeing Paul! She made one quick, blinded rush for the door, and then, a tall figure stood in her way, and her hands were seized in a man's eager grasp. His handsome, exultant face looked into hers.

"My brave girl," he said. "So you have not failed me."