Most especially did he wish Jessie Stirling to be present, so in the invitation that went to her was a note from the happy groom-to-be:
“My Dear Miss Stirling: As you saved me the trouble of setting my wedding day by naming it for July, Leola and I will insure your reputation as a prophet by accepting the date.”
When Jessie read that note, with Chester Olyphant’s name signed to it, she tore it to tatters in her fury, but that did not prevent her from showing the elegant invitation to her employer, and saying, hesitatingly:
“I was once engaged to young Olyphant myself, but his love grew cold when my fortunes failed, and I willingly released him.”
Lady De Vere only smiled, for she had heard from one of Jessie’s former friends the story of Jessie’s engagement, broken through her own fault long before she was reduced to poverty, so she only thought: “That girl is the most consummate liar I ever knew.”
A bitter curiosity carried Jessie to the wedding, but she wore a thick veil, for she did not want to be recognized. When she wrote to her mother afterward about it, she confessed that Chester and Leola made the handsomest bridal couple she ever saw, but that in her humiliation she had one comfort left—though she could not win him back, she had succeeded in separating him from his sweetheart for one terrible year, whose pain and anguish neither could ever forget.
[THE END.]
Transcriber’s Notes:
The Table of Contents was created by the transcriber and placed in the public domain.
Punctuation has been made consistent.