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Rh men, was supposed to be sufficient ground for Miss Mason to have been pleased and flattered by his choice of herself. Society regarded her as a very lucky girl.

John Gault had gone to this dinner reluctantly. The thought of Letitia's marriage with Tod was as repulsive to him after a month had familiarized his mind with it, as it had been on the day Letitia told him of it. That the large-hearted girl, whose simple honesty of nature he had learned long ago to respect and rely on, was to give the freshness and beauty of her life to the feeble and half-bred son of a day-laborer, seemed to him a sacrilege worthy of the days of Molech. He had seen little of Letitia lately. When he had been at his brother's she had generally been absent, staying at the McCormicks', or dining elsewhere with Tod. Whatever her feelings for her fiancé were, Gault saw that, with her unswerving obedience to convention and duty, she was evidently doing her best to understand and grow fond of him.

To-night, however, at the dinner, he saw that a change had taken place in her. It was so subtle, so illusive, so hard to define, that for a space he watched her surreptitiously, wondering what it was. Yet even as he shook hands with her in the moment of greeting, he saw it in her face, he felt it radiating from her,