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But Charlotta had gone.

* * * * *

Down in the valley, the other Gordon house was in a hum of excitement. Upstairs Juliet had gone to her invalid mother’s room to show herself in her wedding dress to the pale little lady lying on the sofa. She was a tall, stately young girl with the dark grey Gordon eyes and the pure creaminess of colouring, flawless as a lily petal. Her face was a very sweet one, and the simple white dress she wore became her dainty, flowerlike beauty as nothing elaborate could have done.

“I’m not going to put on my veil until the last moment,” she said laughingly. “I would feel married right away if I did. And oh, Mother dear, isn’t it too bad? My roses haven’t come. Father is back from the station, and they were not there. I am so disappointed. Romney ordered pure white roses because I said a Gordon bride must carry nothing else. Come in”–as a knock sounded at the door.

Laura Burton, Juliet’s cousin and bridesmaid, entered with a box.

“Juliet dear, the funniest little red-headed girl with the most enormous freckles has just brought this for you. I haven’t an idea where she came from; she looked like a messenger from pixy-land.”

Juliet opened the box and gave a cry.

“Oh, Mother, look–look! What perfect roses! Who could have sent them? Oh, here’s a note from–from–why, Mother, it’s from Cousin Corona.”

“My dear child,” ran the letter in Miss Corona’s fine, old-fashioned script. “I am sending you the Gordon bride roses. The rose-tree has bloomed for the first time in twenty years, my dear, and it must surely be in honour of your wedding day. I hope you will wear them for, although I have never known you, I love you very much. I was once a dear friend of your father’s. Tell him to let you wear the roses I send for old times’ sake. I wish you every happiness, my dear.

“Your affectionate cousin,

“Corona Gordon.”

“Oh, how sweet and lovely of her!” said Juliet gently, as she laid the letter down. “And to think she was not even invited! I wanted to send her an invitation, but Father said it would be better not to–she was so hard and bitter against us that she would probably regard it as an insult.”

“He must have been mistaken about her attitude,” said Mrs. Gordon. “It certainly is a great pity she was not invited, but it is too late now. An invitation sent two hours before the ceremony would be an insult indeed.”

“Not if the bride herself took it!” exclaimed Juliet impulsively. “I’ll go myself to Cousin Corona, and ask her to come to my wedding.”

“Go yourself! Child, you can’t do such a thing! In that dress….”

“Go I must, Momsie. Why, it’s only a three minutes’ walk. I’ll go up the hill by the old field-path, and no one will see me. Oh, don’t say a word–there, I’m gone!”

“That child!” sighed the mother protestingly, as she heard Juliet’s flying feet on the stairs. “What a thing for a bride to do!”

Juliet, with her white silken skirts caught up above grasses and dust, ran light-footedly through the green lowland fields and up the hill, treading for the first time the faint old field-path between the two homes, so long disused that it was now barely visible in its fringing grasses and star-dust of buttercups. Where it ran into the spruce grove was a tiny gate which Miss Corona had always kept in good repair, albeit it was never used. Juliet pushed up the rusty hasp and ran through.

Miss Corona was sitting alone in her shadowy parlour, hanging over a few of the bride roses with falling tears, when something tall and beautiful and white, came in like a blessing and knelt by her chair.

“Cousin Corona,” said a somewhat breathless bride, “I have come to thank you for your roses and ask you to forgive us all for the old quarrel.”

“Dear child,” said Miss Corona out of her amazement, “there is nothing to forgive. I’ve loved you all and longed for you. Dear child, you have brought me great happiness.”

“And you must come to my wedding,” cried Juliet. “Oh, you must–or I shall think you have not really forgiven us. You would never refuse the request of a bride, Cousin Corona. We are queens on our wedding day, you know.”

“Oh, it’s not that, dear child–but I’m not dressed–I–“

“I’ll help you dress. And I won’t go back without you. The guests and the minister must wait if necessary–yes, even Romney must wait. Oh, I want you to meet Romney. Come, dear.”

And Miss Corona went. Charlotta and the bride got her into her grey silk and did her hair, and in a very short time she and Juliet were hurrying down the old field-path. In the hollow Meredith Gordon met them.

“Cousin Meredith,” said Miss Corona tremulously.

“Dear Corona.”

He took both her hands in his, and kissed her heartily. “Forgive me for misunderstanding you so long. I thought you hated us all.”

Turning to Juliet, he said with a fatherly smile,

“What a terrible girl it is for having its own way! Who ever heard of a Gordon bride doing such an unconventional thing? There, scamper off to the house before your guests come. Laura has made your roses up into what she calls ‘a dream of a bouquet,’ I’ll take Cousin Corona up more leisurely.”

“Oh, I knew that something beautiful was going to happen when the old rose-tree bloomed,” murmured Miss Corona happily.