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Although the guests for the reception had been invited to appear at four o'clock, preparations for the event began at dawn, or so it seemed to Ella. Called by Anna at an unreasonable hour, she had dragged herself out of bed to go downstairs to eat breakfast with her sister. She could not remember a single occasion, since she had left Maple Valley, until this morning, when she had shared her breakfast with any one. She found herself, therefore, irritable, without conversation, but Lou made up for this by announcing a running stream of plans and by calling out orders to the hired-girl. Frequently, she ran to the telephone, to give a forgotten instruction to some tradesman, and she had no sooner finished her first cup of coffee than she begged to be excused to go into the kitchen.

The Countess, grateful for this departure, lingered over the bacon and eggs and the steaming, browned buckwheat griddle-cakes, glancing betimes over the local newspaper, the Maple Valley Star. Her eyes wandered, uncaptured, down column after column until, suddenly, they rested on a paragraph headed: