The bride retired to change her dress for a traveling suit of navy blue poplin, with hat and feather to match, and a cashmere wrap. Then came the leave-taking, and the jubilant bridegroom handed his bride into the elegant carriage, while his best man, Clarence, gave the last order.
"To the railway station."
This was the final farewell, for Mr. Fabian had asked as a particular favor that no one of the wedding party should attend them to the depot. Their luggage had been sent on hours before, in charge of the maid and the valet. Half an hour's drive brought them to the station in time to catch the 3:30 train East.
"At last, at last I have you away from all those people and all to myself!" exulted Fabian, as he seated his wife in the corner of the car, and turned the opposite seat that they might have no near fellow passenger. For as yet palace cars were not.
The maid and valet were seated on the opposite side of the car.
The train started.
The speed was swift, yet seemed slow. It was the way train they were on, and it stopped at every little station. They could not have got an express before midnight, and that would have been perilous to their chance of catching the steamer on which their passage to Europe was engaged.
The journey was made without events until about sunset, when the train reached the little mountain station of Edenheights, where it stopped twenty minutes for refreshments.
"What a lovely scene!" said the bride, looking down from the window on her left, into the depths of a small valley lighted up by the last rays of the setting sun streaming through the opening between two wooded hills.
"Yes, dear, lovely, if I can think anything lovely besides yourself," he replied.