“Oh, I understand,” Frank reassured her.  “Besides, I think you are right.  But I was thinking of your mother.  She won’t come.”

“Then you tell her that if she doesn’t come I shan’t be married at all,” said Rachel.  She was betraying unsuspected ability to manage people.  She knew that ultimatum would urge Frank to his best endeavors.

Frank, much to Mrs. Spencer’s dismay, marched boldly in at the front door upon his return.  She pounced on him and whisked him out of sight into the supper room.

“Where’s Rachel?  What made you come that way?  Everybody saw you!”

“It makes no difference.  They will all have to know, anyway.  Rachel says she is going to be married from her father’s house, or not at all.  I’ve come back to tell you so.”

Isabella’s face turned crimson.

“Rachel has gone crazy.  I wash my hands of this affair.  Do as you please.  Take the guests—­the supper, too, if you can carry it.”

“We’ll all come back here for supper,” said Frank, ignoring the sarcasm.  “Come, Mrs. Spencer, let’s make the best of it.”

“Do you suppose that I am going to David Spencer’s house?” said Isabella Spencer violently.

“Oh you must come, Mrs. Spencer,” cried poor Frank desperately.  He began to fear that he would lose his bride past all finding in this maze of triple stubbornness.  “Rachel says she won’t be married at all if you don’t go, too.  Think what a talk it will make.  You know she will keep her word.”

Isabella Spencer knew it.  Amid all the conflict of anger and revolt in her soul was a strong desire not to make a worse scandal than must of necessity be made.  The desire subdued and tamed her, as nothing else could have done.

“I will go, since I have to,” she said icily.  “What can’t be cured must be endured.  Go and tell them.”

Five minutes later the sixty wedding guests were all walking over the fields to the Cove, with the minister and the bridegroom in the front of the procession.  They were too amazed even to talk about the strange happening.  Isabella Spencer walked behind, fiercely alone.

They all crowded into the little room of the house at the Cove, and a solemn hush fell over it, broken only by the purr of the sea-wind around it and the croon of the waves on the shore.  David Spencer gave his daughter away; but, when the ceremony was concluded, Isabella was the first to take the girl in her arms.  She clasped her and kissed her, with tears streaming down her pale face, all her nature melted in a mother’s tenderness.

“Rachel!  Rachel!  My child, I hope and pray that you may be happy,” she said brokenly.

In the surge of the suddenly merry crowd of well-wishers around the bride and groom, Isabella was pushed back into a shadowy corner behind a heap of sails and ropes.  Looking up, she found herself crushed against David Spencer.  For the first time in twenty years the eyes of husband and wife met.  A strange thrill shot to Isabella’s heart; she felt herself trembling.