There was happiness and hope again in the cabins, and
hope and--if not happiness, ambition, in the mansions.
Zora, almost forgetting the wedding, stood before the mirror. Laying
aside her dress, she draped her shimmering cloth about her, dragging her
hair down in a heavy mass over ears and neck until she seemed herself a
bride. And as she stood there, awed with the mystical union of a dead
love and a living new born self, there came drifting in at the window,
faintly, the soft sound of far-off marriage music.
"'Tis thy marriage morning, shining in the sun!"
Two white and white-swathed brides were coming slowly down the great
staircase of Cresswell Oaks, and two white and black-clothed bridegrooms
awaited them. Either bridegroom looked gladly at the flow of his
sister's garments and almost darkly at his bride's. For Helen was decked
in Parisian splendor, while Mary was gowned in the Fleece.
"'Tis thy marriage morning, shining in the sun!"
Up floated the song of the little dark-faced children, and Zora
listened.
_Twenty-two_
MISS CAROLINE WYNN
Bles Alwyn was seated in the anteroom of Senator Smith's office in
Washington. The Senator had not come in yet, and there were others
waiting, too.
The young man sat in a corner, dreaming. Washington was his first great
city, and it seemed a never-ending delight--the streets, the buildings,
the crowds; the shops, and lights, and noise; the kaleidoscopic panorama
of a world's doing, the myriad forms and faces, the talk and laughter of
men.
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