“Marry you!” cried Fair, starting back, half frightened. “Why, I’ve scarcely known you a month, Mr. Lorraine!”

They were alone in the room, for Mrs. Fielding had discreetly left the room. The evening was warm, and Fair was sitting by the open window, dressed in white, with her red-gold curls loose on her shoulders, and a pink rose in her belt, a lovely picture of youth and innocence—and George Lorraine appeared to think so, for he looked very earnest as he bent over her, begging for the gift of her heart and hand.

“Yes, I’ve only known you for a month,” he said, “and, my dear girl, if you were rich and fashionable, I should wait longer before I asked you to marry me; but it is for your sake and your mother’s, as much as for my own. Do you not know, dearest, that I am anxious to remove you from these humble surroundings”—and he flashed a glance of disdain around the shabby little room—“to my beautiful Fifth Avenue home, where you will have such surroundings as befit your beauty and your worth?”

The beautiful face before him grew pale with emotion. Fair was frightened at the thought of marrying George Lorraine, yet dazzled at the glittering prospect he held out to her. Besides, what would her mother say if she refused him? Fair knew quite well that she would be bitterly disappointed, even angry.

“I do not think you are indifferent to me, Fair,” continued her lover. “You have accepted my attentions, and you have seemed to take pleasure in my company and conversation.”

It was all true; she could not deny it. Yet what would he say if she dared tell him that she had welcomed his coming, listened to him with delight, because he talked so much of his cousin—of Bayard Lorraine, whose image filled her heart, whom she loved with the maddest, most foolish love the world ever knew—since, for the one hope of meeting her ideal again, she was thinking of giving her hand to George Lorraine?

“It is not so much his wealth, poor as I am, that tempts me, as the thought that, being his wife, I should meet Bayard Lorraine again—meet him on equal terms, with a name as proud as his own,” she thought, finding a strange balm for her wounded pride in the prospect. “He despises the poor working girl, they say; but, as his cousin’s wife, he cannot look down on me. I shall meet him in society. I shall meet his haughty bride. And when I am dressed in jewels and satins and laces I shall, perhaps, be as beautiful as she is,” ran the tenor of her thoughts; and she was so young, so innocent, so untaught that she did not know that to marry George Lorraine in such a mood would be deadly sin. What did she know of the sanctity of marriage? Her mother had always railed against it as having been the cause of all her trouble.

She kept a little journal, to which alone she confided her girlish, romantic thoughts, and to which the struggles of these days were freely told. It would have brought tears to any eyes to have read there the story of her hopeless love, the tender little verses that flowed from her full heart, and the last entry that was made that night, which ran simply:

Poor Fair—a child in her knowledge of life and the world, a woman in her love—was trying to cheat her heart with a fatal delusion, and one that she paid for most bitterly in the dark days yet to come.

But at present she believed that she was doing what was best and right for herself and her mother, and as far as that mother was concerned she would not have permitted her daughter to turn back if she had desired to do so.

So it was all settled, and George Lorraine begged that a very early date might be named for the marriage, and Mrs. Fielding seconded the motion.

In vain, Fair pleaded that it should not take place until winter. They laughed at her petition, and declared that a month’s time was quite sufficient for her to prepare her simple trousseau.

“For you can buy all you want as soon as we are married,” said her lover.

Mrs. Fielding thought it was very strange that George Lorraine should be willing for his bride-elect to go on working at the factory after their betrothal. But he made no request that Fair should stop; so things went on much the same as before.

She worked all day, and in the afternoon Mr. Lorraine was usually on hand to take her home, creating quite a sensation among the factory girls by his fine clothes and foppish airs, and entirely squelching the pretensions of Waverley Osborne, who, having heard it rumored that Fair was engaged to marry a very rich young man, resigned himself to despair, and talked gloomily to his best friend on the topic of putting an end to a blighted existence by means of pistols or poisons.

Fair’s approaching marriage became known speedily to the working girls, and many of them were pleased with her good fortune, while others were consumed with envy and malice.

As for Mrs. Jones, the sensible forewoman, who had declared that no rich man would marry a working girl, she became quite unpopular with the majority, and had many a sly reminder of her false prophecy from one or another of the ambitious ones who hoped to do as well as Fair some day.

The lovely Fair bore her honors very meekly, and did not seem elated by the brilliant prospect before her.

Indeed, some of the girls decided that her heart was not in the affair, and that it was purely a mercenary match.

“I do not believe it,” said another. “I think she is very much in love with him.”

“But she is always so serious nowadays—always in a brown study,” said Sadie Allen, who was one of those who declared it was a mercenary match.

One of the knowing ones, a girl who had had several love affairs, answered that that was one of the best signs of love.

“She is always thinking of her lover, and pays no attention to anything else; that is all,” she declared.

“Young ladies, please attend to your work!” put in the forewoman, a little sharply, and the merry girls who had been discussing love and marriage so gayly became mute as their fingers took up their tasks again.

It was arranged that Fair should be married at church, and that the newly married pair, with the happy mother, should go at once to the elegant Fifth Avenue residence, where they were to spend a few weeks getting acquainted with their new life; then, leaving Mrs. Fielding in charge of the house, they were to start upon a European tour.

“After the ceremony, we will hold a reception at home,” Mr. Lorraine said, adding: “As it is August, and all my fashionable friends are out of town, we will only ask a few people.”

“Oh, George!” Fair exclaimed, then looked at him pleadingly.

“Well, dearest?” he asked encouragingly, and she faltered:

“I should like—like—to invite—some of the working girls to my reception.”

He frowned slightly.

“But, Fair, you know you will move in a different circle hereafter. And, besides, what would my cousin, Bayard Lorraine, say if he knew that, in addition to the crime of marrying a working girl, I actually invited sewing girls to my wedding reception?”

The hot color flew to the creamy, fair cheeks, as it always did when he spoke that name, and Fair exclaimed angrily:

“Who cares what he thinks? I hate him, and I wish he had not saved my life, so there!” And, to his consternation, she burst into a babyish fit of crying.