"My dear, I have brought you my own bridal veil to wear. I fancied I would like Ronald's bride to wear it. I asked him about it, and he seemed very pleased with the idea."

Mrs. Valchester carefully unwrapped the little package of fine tissue paper, and shook out a web of costly Brussels lace. Jaquelina uttered a low cry of delight.

"It is beautiful," she said, "and you are very kind, Mrs. Valchester."

Ronald's handsome, stately old mother looked pleased.

"So you like it," she said, throwing it over Jaquelina's head, and thinking to herself how beautifully the dark eyes gleamed through its silvery mist. "Now, my dear, if we only had a few natural white flowers to arrange in your hair we should do splendidly. Have you any in your flower garden?"

Jaquelina, with her graceful head on one side, studied intently.

"I am afraid we have none that would do," she said, scornfully. "You see, Mrs. Valchester, it is so late in the season that most of the flowers are gone. In the spring and summer we have white lilacs and syringas, and roses and jessamines, but now we have only some small white chrysanthemums—yes, and a bed of lovely white pansies. Mrs. Earle gave me the plants last year. Would they do at all, Mrs. Valchester?"

"The very things," said the old lady; "are there many of them in bloom?"

"Lots of them," said Jaquelina, enthusiastically, "and, ah, so lovely, Mrs. Valchester. They look like white velvet, and they are so streaked and veined with the loveliest tints I ever saw."

Mrs. Valchester smiled indulgently at her girlish enthusiasm.

"Very well, Lina," she said, kindly. "You may bring me a quantity of the darlings. We will need some for your wreath, and some for your breast, and a knot to fasten in your belt."

Lina, who was already dressed in the quaint, pretty India muslin, and the gold chain and locket, went down from the little chamber in haste to execute the commission.

Mrs. Meredith, who was donning her Sunday best to attend the wedding, looked out from her chamber as the girl passed by.

"Lina, stop in my room as you go back," she said. "I've something for you."

"Very well, Aunt Meredith, I will," she said, hurrying on, full of happy excitement.

In the softly falling twilight she glided down the path to the old-fashioned garden that lay silent and odorous under the pale light of the moon that hung like a silver crescent in the dark blue sky just above the line of the distant hills.

Lina knelt down with a smile on her lips and gathered a lapful of the great, velvety pansies, on which the dewdrops of evening shone like glittering diamonds.

Her white hands trembled with pleasure; her young heart beat high with love and rapture. She had thrown off the incubus of dread since Ronald's reassuring words last night; yet a sudden, swift memory caused her, as she rose, to glance quickly around her, and then to gather up her flowers and fly along the path back to the house.

As she hurried up to her own room she suddenly remembered Mrs. Meredith's injunction, and ran back to her door, where she tapped lightly.

It was opened by her aunt, who held a small package in her hand, and spoke thickly, with her mouth full of hairpins.

"A black man brought this here, and said it was a bridal-present for you," Lina understood her to say.

She took the package and went on to Mrs. Valchester.

She emptied her lapful of flowers on the toilet-table and held up the package with a smile.

"Some one has sent me a bridal-gift," she laughed.

"Don't stop to examine it now, my dear," said Mrs. Valchester. "We have no time to lose. Sit down here by me, and let us tie the pansies into pretty little bunches."

Jaquelina sat down obediently, and Mrs. Valchester said:

"I will tell you a secret, Lina. Ronald went to New York last week and purchased an exquisite set of jewelry—diamonds and large, pale pearls—for your bridal-gift. Do you like jewels?"

"Very much," said Lina; "but I have never possessed any except mamma's few trinkets and the engagement-ring that Ronald gave me."

"Ronald does not mean to give you the jewels till after the wedding," said Ronald's adoring mother. "He has a poetic fancy for you to wear just the same things you wore when he first met you. Of course, that would never do in a fashionable place, but here in the country it does not matter so much to give him his way. Ronald is very fanciful and poetic. He is about to publish a volume of poems. I am sure they must succeed. Some of them are quite Byronic."

So Ronald's fond mother rambled on to his bride-elect, while with her own white, jeweled fingers she adjusted the beautiful veil on the girl's graceful head; confining it with knots of velvety white pansies.

When she said, quite proudly: "You are finished, and you make a really beautiful bride, my dear," Lina's heart gave a throb of rapture at the praise of her betrothed's mother.

"I may open the package now?" she said, timidly, to the stately old lady in her silver-gray silk and real laces and soft puffs of gray hair.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Valchester, "for I suppose you are impatient to see what token of kindness one of your friends has sent to you."

Jaquelina removed the wrappings and found a small painting, exquisitely framed in ebony and silver. The painting represented a serpent crushing a dove. Beneath it was written, in a fine, clear, feminine hand the one word:

"Vendetta."

Mrs. Valchester looked over Lina's shoulder at the strange bridal-gift.

"Lina," she said, gravely, "it is not a friend who has sent you this; it is an enemy."

"Oh, how cruel!" said the girl.

Her fair cheeks grew pale, and a frightened look came into her dark eyes.

"Who could have done it?" said Mrs. Valchester. "Have you an enemy, my child—a female enemy? This is the writing of a woman."

"I do not know a woman on earth who dislikes me," Lina replied.

"It was very unkind and cruel," said Mrs. Valchester, warmly. "I should not have thought anyone could be so cruel as to try and frighten you thus in the happiest moment of your life. It is very strange that you should have an unknown enemy who should take this method of declaring war against you. We must tell Ronald about it, and see if he can have any idea as to the perpetrator."

Then she paused, and Lina laid the threatening bridal-gift upon the small toilet-table, for the rumble of wheels was heard below. Ronald Valchester had come for his bride.

"They are come. Do not be frightened Lina," said Mrs. Valchester, smiling, as the sensitive white-and-red began to come and go in the cheeks of the dark-eyed girl.