As a result of Muriel’s show Leslie Cairns found herself in better standing among her housemates than she had dreamed ever of attaining. It often takes some very small thing to turn the tide of approval or disapproval. The tide had turned in Leslie’s favor when Muriel had quoted Hamilton’s highest tradition. Hardly a girl present but that had experienced a secret twinge of conscience for the petition they had signed against Leslie Cairns.

Nor had it been particularly reassuring to see Marjorie Dean, Doris Monroe, Muriel Harding and Miss Remson firmly entrenched against them. While they counted as the majority at the Hall the Bertram girls and the post graduates were powers on the campus. At first Julia’s and Mildred’s strenuous objections to Leslie had made an impression upon their housemates. Dulcie Vale’s despicable communication had bolstered their disapproval only at the time of hearing. Later, in thinking it over and talking together about it, the more serious element of the girls had cherished doubts as to its entire veracity. It was Julia’s stanchest supporters who had started the objection when the four girls and Miss Remson had walked in upon their meeting. In the end even they had come shame-faced to a more charitable view of matters.

Doris had been touched to learn from Miss Remson that on the day of the meeting Clara Carter had come to her and asked to be permitted to strike her name from the petition. Meeting Clara face to face on the campus the day following the meeting Doris had shaken hands with the red-haired girl and invited her to dinner at Baretti’s. Clara had accepted with surprised joy and had agreeably surprised Doris by her avoidance of personal gossip. Of Julia she said nothing. Nor did Doris mention Julia’s name.

At Hamilton Arms Marjorie was beginning to look forward to the fruits of her planting. February was a triumphal month to her because toward the latter part of it she completed the biography of Brooke Hamilton. On the third Sunday in February she had completed her work except for a last paragraph which she had purposely left to be written on a special occasion. That Sunday having been chosen as the special occasion the original Travelers came to Hamilton Arms to spend the afternoon and evening. At five o’clock, the hour when Brooke Hamilton had welcomed tea in his workshop, a reverent little company gathered in the study. There, Marjorie, surrounded by her friends composed the final paragraph and triumphantly wrote “The End” at the bottom of the last page of manuscript. Then in turn the girls recited the Brooke Hamilton maxims and Miss Susanna read a prayer, a translation from the German, of which Brooke Hamilton had been fond. As a last tribute to him they had lifted up their fresh young voices in the Hymn to Hamilton, filling the departed founder’s workshop with melody while he appeared to smile contentedly down from the wall at the sweet-voiced singers.

The manuscript for the biography was to be placed in the hands of a New York publisher. Marjorie’s color deepened every time she happened to recall the fact that when the biography should have been published she would then be Marjorie Dean Macy.

“It is a relief to know the biography is done,” she said to Miss Susanna on the morning after she had completed it in the presence of her intimates. “There are so many other things to think of. Next week the dormitory will be ready for the furniture. Then will come the dedication of it. After that will be the library dedication. Then we must have a house warming. It will take two weeks to place the furniture, and one week to celebrate. There are three whole weeks of March gone and from that on you know how it will be. Captain will be here, and I’ll have to resign myself to innumerable fittings. Oh, dear!” Marjorie’s sunny smile accompanied the half rueful exclamation.

“You are a much harrassed person.” Miss Susanna’s sympathy was too dry to be genuine. She smiled her crinkly smile at Marjorie and said: “Are you going to be very busy this morning. Marvelous Manager?”

“Very. I have an engagement with Miss Susanna Hamilton to do whatever she would like to have me do.” Marjorie rose from where she had been sitting at the study table writing to her Captain and crossed to the small, bright-eyed figure in the doorway. She offered Miss Susanna both hands with the pretty impulsiveness that was one of her charms.

“Come then.” Miss Susanna took Marjorie by the arm and began walking her gently down the long hall and toward her own spacious, airy bed room. It was a beautiful room with a big sunny bow window and handsome old-fashioned furnishings. There was a canopied four poster bed, high-backed mahogany chairs, with a highboy and immense dresser to match. A gate-legged table, high desk and several other notable antiques made up a collection which a dealer in antiques would have regarded with envious eyes.

From girlhood it had been Miss Susanna’s room, and she had never allowed any change to be made in it from the way in which she had found it when she came to Hamilton Arms to live with her distinguished kinsman.

As she stepped over the threshold of her girlhood sanctum, clinging to Marjorie’s arm, she steered the young girl across the room and brought her to a forced, playful halt before a very large black teakwood chest. It was purely Chinese in character, the lid being decorated with an intricate gold pattern, the spiral complicated curves of which emanated from the wide-open jaws of a gold dragon.

Marjorie had always greatly admired the chest. Once she had asked Miss Susanna if it had not been brought from China by Brooke Hamilton. The old lady had replied “Yes, my dear,” with a peculiar brevity which Marjorie had early learned to recognize as a sign that Miss Hamilton preferred to close the subject before it had hardly been broached.

“I brought you here with me this morning, dear child, to show you something that belongs to the long ago. It’s something I’ve often debated letting you see. I have decided as many times against it as for it. But after I knew that you were going to put a cranky old person named Hamilton in the seventh heaven of delight by getting married at the Arms, I knew I should show you this chest, and what’s in it, and tell you the history of it. This is only for you, Marjorie. But you may tell your Captain, and Hal, for you must never have secrets from either your mother, or your husband.”

“Then Mystified Manager said to Goldendede, the keeper of the castle, ‘I will obey you in all things, Goldendede, for I know you to be a wise woman.’” Marjorie laughingly improvised. “That’s the way I feel. The enchantment of the castle hangs over me, and I am on the way to marvelous revelations.”

“Marvelous? I don’t know.” The old lady’s head tilted to its bird-like angle. “I believe the only marvelous part is that I did not get married. Now perhaps you can guess what’s in that chest.” She eyed Marjorie shrewdly.

“Miss Susanna!” Light had suddenly dawned upon Marjorie. “You mean—” She stopped, then cried: “Was that chest your hope—”

“It was,” came the crisp response. “In it is my wedding dress.” She threw back the lid as she spoke, then removed a white linen cover arranged over the contents of the chest as a protection.

Marjorie gasped in girl admiration as she caught sight of fold upon fold of heavy pearl-seeded white satin. “Oh!” she exhaled rapturously. “How beautiful!”

Miss Susanna lifted the billows of satin from the box. “I’ll lay out the dress on my bed.” She gathered the creamy folds in her arms and trotted over to her bed. Looking in the box, Marjorie saw a teakwood tray that extended across the box. In it were a pair of long white gloves, a pair of the most exquisitely embroidered white silk stockings she had ever seen and an underslip of thin white Chinese silk embroidered in a pattern of orange blossoms. The stockings also bore the same pattern embroidered in a straight strip up and down the fronts.

“Bring over the accessories which I didn’t need, child,” Miss Susanna directed, matter-of-fact in the midst of reminders of her own romance.

Marjorie gathered up the lovely things and carried them over to the bed. As Miss Susanna had already walked toward the chest Marjorie laid the dainty articles of the bridal outfit reverently upon the snowy expanse of linen spread.

While she was engaged in the pleasant yet half sad task, Miss Susanna returned to her side. Her eyes directed toward the wedding gown, which was a dream of loveliness, she suddenly felt something falling down over her head and face in misty, transparent folds. She cried out and looked through the delicate transparency to see Miss Susanna smiling at her with untold tenderness.

“It was to have been my wedding veil, Marjorie. I wish it to be yours. Come over to the mirror and let me drape it on you. You are not much taller than I. Thank fortune this veil is yards and yards in length and width. The present-day veils are so very voluminous.”

“This veil is a poem, Goldendede,” Marjorie declared fervently; “a poem in pearls, mist and orange blossoms. Surely, there was never its equal on land or sea!”

She had obediently moved to the great oval mirror of the dresser, standing slim and lovely in her white lawn morning gown. Over her head and flowing down to her feet and far beyond them was the exquisite veil of finest Brussels net, outlined with pearls and caught up here and there with sprays of creamy satin orange blossoms which closely resembled the natural blossoms. The dainty bridal cap formed by the gathering together of the veil was banded with pearls and orange blossoms. Squarely in front and slightly below the pearl band was a star of matched pearls.

“Can this be I?” Marjorie cried jokingly, yet half embarrassed. The mirror told her the story of her own beauty so clearly she felt an unbidden desire to cry over the fact that she was beautiful in the marvelous veil. “Where did it come from, Goldendede?” she asked wonderingly. “It’s not that I am beautiful. It’s the veil. It could transform the plainest person from positive homeliness to beauty.”

“It would go a long way toward it,” Miss Susanna smiled indulgently at the enchanting vision before the mirror. “Still, I must say that I never looked as you do in it, child. And I was a fairly pretty girl, too. Uncle Brooke and I made a voyage to Europe on purpose to order my trousseau. He bought the most expensive piece of net for sale in Brussels. We took it to Paris and had the veil made there with the rest of the trousseau. That is the history of it.”

The old lady stood back to view the effect of the veil upon Marjorie, an absent, meditative look in her bright eyes.

“The days that followed the breaking of my engagement with Gray were hard; hard indeed,” she continued. “His name was Grayson Landor. He was very good-looking. But he did not love me; nor I him. He knew it when he proposed marriage to me. I did not know until after I had steeled myself against seeing him. He was unworthy, child; utterly unworthy. He was in love with a poor young girl, really in love with her, yet he was content to forsake her and marry me for my money, and because I was a Hamilton. I am glad I found him out in time. I realize more and more that I was chosen to carry on Uncle Brooke’s plans, and alone. I regret the years I lost through Alec Carden’s interference.”

The mistress of the Arms sat down on the edge of a chair and folded her hands together. “Yes; I lost so much time,” she said musingly, almost as though she had forgotten Marjorie’s presence.

“Why did I name you Goldendede?” Marjorie demanded with severity. “What about the dormitory site, and the Brooke Hamilton Library and the biography, and your general generousness to Hamilton? Even when you felt resentment against Hamilton you tried to carry out his wishes so far as the business part of the college was concerned. Many persons placed in the same circumstances would have refused to continue the endowment which Mr. Brooke made Hamilton, but subject to your approval after his death. You were truly chosen to carry out his plans. I always feel that somewhere in eternity Mr. Brooke knows and is glad.”