“I wish it were for the grave that I am about to robe myself,” thought Jess; but she said no more to the maid, who insisted on remaining with her and assisting her.
Jess pushed away the tempting little repast of bird on toast, fresh rolls, fruit and fragrant coffee which was set before her; she could not eat a morsel, or swallow a drop had her very life depended upon it.
“Take it away, Marie,” she said. “It seems as though I could never eat anything again.”
“What a wonderful thing love is, when it makes a girl feel like that—nervous and all broken up—on her wedding day,” mused the maid, wondering when the handsome young artist and his pleasant companion would make good their promise to call. One thing she had noticed and thought long and earnestly about, and that was that they only cared to linger while she was talking to them about her mistress’ guest, Miss Jess; when she persisted in changing the conversation, they had taken sudden leave.
“Everybody who sees her goes wild over her beauty,” mused the maid, gazing at the girl sitting before her, with eyes that were certainly jealous ones, “and, somehow, I shall be very glad when she marries and goes away from here. Who knows but what my two new friends were enamored of her, too? The more I come to look back over their questions and words, the more it looks like that to me.”
She had little time to follow up the train of her reflections, however, for time was fleeting. It wanted but fifteen minutes now to the time when the handsome, fair-haired gentleman whom Jess was to wed would come for her.
“Ah, here he is now!” she exclaimed, as the sound of a peal at the front doorbell fell upon her ear.
An instant later Jess recognized the voice of her bridegroom-to-be in the lower corridor, and at that instant Queenie, gowned and bonneted, fluttered into the room, exclaiming:
“All is in readiness, Jess, except yourself. Hurry, my love. It is unlucky to delay the marriage ceremony a moment beyond the appointed time.”