Marcia Schuyler by Grace Livingston Hill Page A

David had arranged that a fine dinner should be ready for his bride. Fine it was, with the best cooking and table service the mistress of the tavern could command, and with many a little touch new and strange to Marcia, and therefore interesting. It was all a lovely play till she looked at David.
    David ate but little, and Marcia felt she must hurry through the meal for his sake. Then when the carryall was ready he put her in and they drove away.
[pg 84]
    Marcia’s keen intuition told her how many little things had been thought of and planned for, for the comfort of the one who was to have taken this journey with David. Gradually the thought of how terrible it was for him, and how dreadful of Kate to have brought this sorrow upon him, overcame all other thoughts.
    Sitting thus quietly, with her hands folded tight in the faded bunch of roses little Harriet had given her at parting, the last remaining of the flowers she had carried with her, Marcia let the tears come. Silently they flowed in gentle rain, and had not David been borne down with the thought of his own sorrow he must have noticed long before he did the sadness of the sweet young face beside him. But she turned away from him as much as possible that he might not see, and so they must have driven for half an hour through a dim sweet wood before he happened to catch a sight of the tear-wet face, and knew suddenly that there were other troubles in the world beside his own.
    “Why, child, what is the matter?” he said, turning to her with grave concern. “Are you so tired? I’m afraid I have been very dull company,” with a sigh. “You must forgive me—child, to-day.”
    “Oh, David, don’t,” said Marcia putting her face down into her hands and crying now regardless of the roses. “I do not want you to think of me. It is dreadful, dreadful for you. I am so sorry for you. I wish I could do something.”
    “Dear child!” he said, putting his hand upon hers. “Bless you for that. But do not let your heart be troubled about me. Try to forget me and be happy. It is not for you to bear, this trouble.”
    “But I must bear it,” said Marcia, sitting up and trying to stop crying. “She was my sister and she did an awful thing. I cannot forget it. How could she, how could she do it? How could she leave a man like you that—” Marcia stopped, her brown eyes flashing fiercely as she thought of [pg 85] Captain Leavenworth’s hateful look at her that night in the moonlight. She shuddered and hid her face in her hands once more and cried with all the fervor of her young and undisciplined soul.
    David did not know what to do with a young woman in tears. Had it been Kate his alarm would have vied with a delicious sense of his own power to comfort, but even the thought of comforting any one but Kate was now a bitter thing. Was it always going to be so? Would he always have to start and shrink with sudden remembrance of his pain at every turn of his way? He drew a deep sigh and looked helplessly at his companion. Then he did a hard thing. He tried to justify Kate, just as he had been trying all the morning to justify her to himself. The odd thing about it all was that the very deepest sting of his sorrow was that Kate could have done this thing! His peerless Kate!
    “She cared for him,” he breathed the words as if they hurt him.
    “She should have told you so before then. She should not have let you think she cared for you— ever! ” said Marcia fiercely. Strangely enough the plain truth was bitter to the man to hear, although he had been feeling it in his soul ever since they had discovered the flight of the bride.
    “Perhaps there was too much pressure brought to bear upon her,” he said lamely. “Looking back I can see times when she did not second me with regard to hurrying the marriage, so warmly as I could have wished. I laid it to her shyness. Yet she seemed happy when we met. Did you—did she—have you any idea she had been planning this for long,