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 of a feast she saw fit to offer for such an occasion. A wry grin crossed his cheeks when he thought of the look that would come on her face if he told her that, and then she would speak and she would ask where his bride was; and where his bride was happened to be a secret and the business of the bride herself. He reflected that if she was where she had been at midnight the previous night, she would not be so very far from him at the present minute. He was assailed by an impulse to go down and walk up and down the beach, to scan each house accessible from the shore line to see whether in any of them there was visible a glimpse of a girl clad in the deepest kind of mourning.

How much that mourning meant, Jamie could not decide. He remembered that the girl had offered to begin at the beginning and tell him the story. It had been he who had told her to use a few words, merely to state what she wanted. If she had been as full of Scottish blood as he, she could not have taken him at his word more quickly or more completely. She had stated the bald facts and he, Jamie reflected, with another twisted grin, had materialized the facts. The lady had said that she needed a ring, a marriage certificate and a name, and she had stood beside him, she had allowed the ring to be put on her finger, she had taken possession of the certificate. One thing he did recall. She had laid the document on her breast and folded both hands over it and held it there as if nothing in all the world could be more precious to her. Ar his name. At least she had accepted it in marriage whether she meant to use it or not.