CHAPTER VIII.
THE HONEYMOONERS Again Jack's arm tightened about Mrs.De Peyster in his convulsive glee, and again he exclaimed, "Oh, Matilda, won't it be a lark!" Only the embrace of Jack's good left arm kept Mrs.De Peyster from subsiding into a jellied heap upon her parqueted floor.

It had ever been her pride, and a saying of her admirers, that she always rose equal to every emergency.

But at the present moment she had not a thought, had not a single distinct sensation.

She was wildly, weakly, terrifyingly dizzy--that was all; and her only self-control, if the paralysis of an organ may be called controlling it, was that she held her tongue.
Fortunately, at first, there was little necessity for her speaking.
The bride and groom were too joyously loquacious to allow her much chance for words, and too bubbling over with their love and with the spirit of daring mischief to be observant of any strangeness in her demeanor that the darkness did not mask.

As they chattered on, Mrs.
De Peyster began to regain some slight steadiness--enough to consider spasmodically how she was to escape undiscovered from the pair, how she was to extricate herself from the predicament of the moment--for beyond that moment's danger she had not the power to think.