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100 LIFE’S LITTLE IRONIES

raphy were reproduced the inspiration would be another thing. “You do it so beaatifully,” continued Anna, “and say all that I want to say so much better than I could say it, that I do hope you won't leave me in the lurch just now!”

“Very well,” replied the other. “But I— but I thought I ought not to go on.”

"Why?"

Her strong desire to confide her sentiments led Edith to answer truly:

“ Because of its effect upon me.”

“But it can’t have any!”

“Why, child ?”

“Because you are married already!” said Anna, with lucid simplicity.

“Of course it can’t,” said her mistress, hastily ; yet glad, deapite her conscience, that two or three outpourings still remained to her. ‘But you must concentrate your attention on writing your name as I write it here,”

VI

Soon Rays wrote about the wedding. Having decided to make the best of what he feared waa a piece of romantic folly, he had acquired more zest for the grand experiment. He wished the ceremony to be in London, for greater privacy. Edith Harnham would have preferred it at Melchester; Anna was passive. His reasoning prevailed, and Mrs. Harnham threw herself with mournful zeal into the preparations for Anna’s departure. In a last desperate feeling that she muat at every hazard be in at the death of her dream,