Family Pride

"Pure, loving, innocent, and unsuspecting," was Marian Hazelton's verdict, and she followed wistfully every movement of the young girl as she flitted around the room, chatting as familiarly with the dressmaker as if she were a friend long known instead of an entire stranger.

"You look very young to be married," said Miss Hazelton to her once, and shaking back her short rings of hair Katy answered: "Eighteen next Fourth of July; but Mr. Cameron is thirty."

"Is he a widower?" was the next question, which Katy answered with a merry laugh. "Mercy, no! I marry a widower! How funny! I don't believe he ever cared a fig for anybody but me. I mean to ask him."

"I would," and the pale lips shut tightly together, while a resentful gleam shot for a moment across Marian's face; but it quickly passed away, and her smile was as sweet as ever as she at last bade the family good-night and repaired to the little room where Wilford Cameron once had slept.

A long time she stood before the glass, brushing her dark, abundant hair, and intently regarding her own features, while in her eyes there was a hard, terrible look, from which Katy Lennox would have shrunk abashed. But that too passed, and the eyes grew soft with tears as she turned away, and falling on her knees moaned sadly: "I never will--no, I never will, God help me to keep the promise. Were it the other--Helen--I might, for she could bear it; but Katy, that child---no, I never will," and as the words died on her lips there came struggling up from her heart a prayer for Katy Lennox's happiness, as fervent and sincere as any which had ever been made for her since she was betrothed.

They grew to liking each other rapidly, Marian and Katy, the latter of whom thought her new friend greatly out of place as a dressmaker, telling her she ought to marry some rich man, calling her Marian altogether, and questioning her very closely of her previous life. But Marian only told her that she was born in London; that she learned her trade on the Isle of Wight, near to the Osborne House, where the royal family sometimes came, and that she had often seen the present Queen, thus trying to divert Katy's mind from asking what there was besides that apprenticeship to the Misses True on the Isle of Wight. Once, indeed, she went further, learning that Marian's friends were dead; that she had come to America in hopes of doing better than she could at home; that she had stayed in New York until her health began to fail, and then had tried what country air would do, coming to North Silverton because a young woman who worked in the same shop was acquainted there, and recommended the place. This was all Katy could learn, and Marian's heart history, if she had one, was guarded carefully. One day as they sat together alone, when Helen had gone to the village to do some shopping for Katy, Marian abruptly said: "I have lived in New York, you know, and why do you not ask if I ever saw these Camerons?"