know begrudged another woman her youth or her beauty or her talent or her wealth. But if it ever came to a chance of swapping facial expressions, just once in my life, some very rainy morning, I wish I could look like a Bridegroom!

But the expression on the Bride's face was distinctly worried. Joy worried! Any woman who had ever been a bride could have read the expression like an open book. Victoria Brenswick had not counted on rain. Moonlight, of course, was what she had counted on! Moonlight, day and night in all probability! And long, sweet, soft stretches of beach! And cavernous rocks! And incessantly mirthful escapades of escape from the crowd! But to be shut up all day long in a houseful of strange people! . . . With a Bridegroom who after all was still more or less of a strange Bridegroom? The panic in her face was almost ghastly! The panic of the Perfectly-Happy! The panic of the person hanging over-ecstatically on the absolute perfection of a singer's prolonged high note, driven all at once to wonder if this is the moment when the note must break! . . . To be all alone and bored on a rainy day is no more than anyone would expect. . . . But to be with one's Lover and have the day prove dull? . . . If God in the terrible uncertainty of Him should force even one dull day into the miracle of their life together——?

Ann Woltor, dragging down to breakfast just a few moments late, had not noticed especially, it seemed, that the day was rainy. She met my Husband's eyes as she met the eyes of her fellow-guests, calmly, indifferently, and with perfect sophistication. If his presence or personality was in any way a shock to her she certainly gave no sign of it.

The May Girl didn't appear till very late, so late indeed that everybody started to tease her for being such a Sleepy Head. Her face was very flushed. Her hair in a riot of gold— and gray. Her appetite like the appetite of a young cannibal. Across the rim of her cocoa cup she hurled a lovely defiance at her traducers. "Sleepy Head!" she exulted. "Not much! Hadn't she been up since six? And out on the beach? And all over the rocks? . . . Way, way out to the farthest point? . . . There was such a heavenly suit of yellow oil-skins in her closet! . . . She hoped it wasn't cheeky of her but she just couldn't resist 'em! . . . And the fishes? . . . The poor, poor little bruised fishes dashed up, by that terrible surf on the rocks! . . . . She thought she never, never would get them all put back! . . . They kept coming and coming so! Every new wave! Flopping!—Flopping——"

Rollins's breakfast had been sent to his room. You yourself wouldn't have wanted to spring Rollins on any one quite so early in the day. And with my best breakfast tray, my second best china, and sherry in the grape fruit, there was no reason certainly why Rollins in any way should feel discriminated against. Surely, as far as Rollins knew, every guest was breakfasting in bed.

Even without Rollins there was quite enough uncertainty in the air.

Everybody was talking—talking about the morning, I mean—not about yesterday morning; most certainly not about yesterday night! Babble, chatter, drawl, laughter, the voices rose and fell. Breakfast indeed was just about over when a faint stir on the threshold made everybody look up.

It was the Drunken Stranger of the night before.

Heaven knows he was sober enough now. But very shaky! Yet collarless as he was and still unshaven—our men had evidently not expected quite so early a resuscitation—he loomed up now in the doorway with a certain tragic poise and dignity that was by no means unattractive.

"Why, hello!" said everybody.

"Hello!" said the Stranger. With a palpable flex of muscle he leaned back against the wainscoting of the door and narrowed his haggard eyes to the cheerful scene before him. "I don't know where I am," he said, "or how I got here. . . . Or who you are." "I can't seem to remember anything." The faintly sheepish smile that quickened suddenly in his eyes, if not distinctly humorous, was at least plucky. "I think I must have had a drink," he said.

"I wouldn't wonder!" grinned Paul Brenswick.

"You are perfectly right," conceded George Keets.

"Have another!" suggested my Husband. "A straight and narrow this time! You look wobbly. There's nothing like coffee."

And still the Stranger stood undecided in the doorway. "I'm not very fit," he acknowledged. "Not with ladies. . . . But I had to know where I was." Blinking with perplexity he stared and stared at the faces before him. "I'm three thousand miles from home," he worried. "I don't know a soul this side of the Sierras. . . . I—I don't know how it happened——"

"Oh, Shucks!" shrugged young Kennilworth. "Easiest thing in the world to happen to a stranger in a new town! 'Welcome to our City Welcome to our City' from night till morning and morning till night again! Any crowd once it gets started——"

"Crowd!" brightened the Stranger. "I—I was in some sort of a—a crowd?" he rummaged hopefully through his poor bruised brain.

From her concentrated interest in a fried chicken-bone, the May Girl glanced up with her first evidence of divided attention.

"Yes! You were!" she confided genially. "It was at the railroad junction. And when the officer arrived, he said, 'I hate like the dickens to run this gentleman in, but if there's nobody to look after him—?' So I said you belonged to me! I saw the crape on your sleeve!" said the May Girl.

"Crape—on—my—sleeve?" stammered the Stranger. With a dreadful gesture of incredulity he lifted his black-banded arm into vision. It was like watching a live heart torn apart to see his memory waken. "My—God!" he gasped. "My God!" Still wavering but with a really heroic effort to square his stricken shoulders, he swung back toward the company. His face was livid, his voice, barely articulate. Over face and voice lay still that dreadful blight of astonishment. But when he spoke his statement was starkly simple. "I—I buried my wife and unborn child—yesterday," he said. "In a strange land—among strangers I—I——"

More quickly than I could possibly have imagined it, George Keets was on his feet beckoning the Stranger to the place which he himself had just vacated. And with his hands on the Stranger's shoulders he bent down suddenly over him with a curiously twisted little smile.

"Welcome to our—Pity!" said George Keets.

Between Paul Brenswick and his Bride there flashed a sharp glance of terror. It was as though the bride's heart had gasped out. "What if I have to die some day?—And this day was wasted in rain?"

I saw young Kennilworth flush and turn away from that glance. I saw the May Girl open her eyes with a new baffled sort of perplexity.

It was then that Rollins came puttering in, grinning like a Chessy Cat, with his half-demolished breakfast sliding round rather threateningly on his ill-balanced tray. The strange exultancy of rain was in his eye.

"I thought I heard voices," he beamed. "Merry voices!" With mounting excitement he began to beat tunes with his knife and fork upon the delicate porcelain dome of his toast dish. "Am I a—King," he began to intone, "that I should call my own, this—?" Struck suddenly by the somewhat strained expression of Ann Woltor's face, he dropped his knife and fork and fixed his eye upon her for the first time with an unmistakable intentness.

"How did you break your tooth?" beamed Rollins.

CHAPTER II

FOR a single horrid moment everybody's heart seemed to lurch off into space to land only too audibly in a gaspy thud of dismay.

Then Ann Woltor with unprecedented presence of mind jumped up from the table and ran to the mirror over the fireplace. Only the twittering throat-muscle reflected in that mirror belied for an instant the sincerity of either her haste or her astonishment.

"Broken tooth!" she protested incredulously. "Why! Have I got a—broken tooth?"