"What was the heroine's name, papa?" asked Doris.
"Miriam Dale. I always notice that if a heroine is to come to any pathetic end she is called Miriam."
"Did she love her lover very much?" asked Doris.
"Read the story, my dear," said the earl, indolently; "it is not much in my line. The engraving caught my attention—a beautiful, frantic girl, dressed in bridal robes and wreathed in flames. There is something terrible about it."
Doris rose from her seat and opened the book; then, after looking at the picture, she laid it down with a long, shuddering sigh.
"Stories often fail in poetic justice," she said. "If that girl was young and innocent, if she had done no wrong, why should she have been killed on her wedding-eve?"
"Stories are, after all, but sketches taken from life," said the earl, "and life often seems to us, short-seeing mortals, to fail in poetic justice, although, no doubt, everything is right and just in the sight of Heaven. Doris is growing serious over it."
"We tried her wedding-dress on this morning, but there was no fire near it, and no harm came of it."
"I am no believer in those stupid superstitions, although I have heard it is unlucky to try on a wedding-dress; still I do not believe it will make one iota of difference."
"How can it?" said Earle, calmly; and they all remembered that conversation a few hours afterward.