THE UNSEEN BRIDEGROOM

OR,

WEDDED FOR A WEEK

BY MAY AGNES FLEMING

CHAPTER I.--THE WALRAVEN BALL.
CHAPTER II.--"CRICKET."
CHAPTER III.--MR. WALRAVEN'S WEDDING.
CHAPTER IV.--MOLLIE'S CONQUEST.
CHAPTER V.--MOLLIE'S MISCHIEF.
CHAPTER VI.--MOLLIE'S BRIDAL.
CHAPTER VII.--WHERE THE BRIDE WAS.
CHAPTER VIII.--THE MIDNIGHT MARRIAGE.
CHAPTER IX.--ONE WEEK AFTER.
CHAPTER X.--THE PARSON'S LITTLE STORY.
CHAPTER XI.--A MIDNIGHT TETE-A-TETE.
CHAPTER XII.--"BLACK MASK"—"WHITE MASK."
CHAPTER XIII.--MRS. CARL WALRAVEN'S LITTLE GAME.
CHAPTER XIV.--THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.
CHAPTER XV.--THE MAN IN THE MASK.
CHAPTER XVI.--MOLLIE'S DESPAIR.
CHAPTER XVII.--MIRIAM TO THE RESCUE.
CHAPTER XVIII.--"SHE ONLY SAID, 'MY LIFE IS DREARY.'"
CHAPTER XIX.--MISTRESS SUSAN SHARPE.
CHAPTER XX.--HUGH INGELOW KEEPS HIS PROMISE.
CHAPTER XXI.--MRS. SHARPE DOES HER DUTY.
CHAPTER XXII.--A MOONLIGHT FLITTING.
CHAPTER XXIII.--PRIVATE THEATRICALS.
CHAPTER XXIV.--MOLLIE'S TRIUMPH.
CHAPTER XXV.--MIRIAM'S MESSAGE.
CHAPTER XXVI.--MIRIAM'S STORY.
CHAPTER XXVII.--DEAD AND BURIED.
CHAPTER XXVIII.--CRICKET'S HUSBAND.
CHAPTER XXIX.--WHICH WINDS UP THE BUSINESS.

CHAPTER I.

THE WALRAVEN BALL.

A dark November afternoon—wet, and windy, and wild. The New York streets were at their worst—sloppy, slippery, and sodden; the sky lowering over those murky streets one uniform pall of inky gloom. A bad, desolate, blood-chilling November afternoon.

And yet Mrs. Walraven's ball was to come off to-night, and it was rather hard upon Mrs. Walraven that the elements should make a dead set at her after this fashion.

The ball was to be one of the most brilliant affairs of the season, and all Fifth Avenue was to be there in its glory.

Fifth Avenue was above caring for anything so commonplace as the weather, of course; but still it would have been pleasanter, and only a handsome thing in the clerk of the weather, considering Mrs. Walraven had not given a ball for twenty years before, to have burnished up the sun, and brushed away the clouds, and shut up that icy army of winter winds, and turned out as neat an article of weather as it is possible in the nature of November to turn out.

Of course, Mrs. Walraven dwelt on New York's stateliest avenue, in a big brown-stone palace that was like a palace in an Eastern story, with its velvet carpets, its arabesques, its filigree work, its chairs, and tables, and sofas touched up and inlaid with gold, and cushioned in silks of gorgeous dyes.

And in all Fifth Avenue, and in all New York City, there were not half a dozen old women of sixty half so rich, half so arrogant, or half so ill-tempered as Mrs. Ferdinand Walraven.

On this bad November afternoon, while the rain and sleet lashed the lofty windows, and the shrill winds whistled around the gables, Mrs. Ferdinand Walraven's only son sat in his chamber, staring out of the window, and smoking no end of cigars.

Fifth Avenue, in the raw and rainy twilight, is not the sprightliest spot on earth, and there was very little for Mr. Walraven to gaze at except the stages rattling up the pave, and some belated newsboys crying their wares.

Perhaps these same little ill-clad newsboys, looking up through the slanting rain, and seeing the well-dressed gentleman behind the rich draperies, thought it