rge and
fashionable assembly.

The swelling music of the wedding march pealed out. The bridal party
filed into the church. The organ peals hushed. The resonant voice of a
minister, with sing-song solemnity, began the marriage service.

Margaret Maynard knew she stood there in the flesh, yet the shimmering
white satin, the flowing veil, covered some one who was a stranger to
her.

And this other, this strange being who dominated her movements, stood
passively and willingly by, while her despairing and truer self saw
the shame and truth. She was a lie. The guests, friends, attendants,
bridesmaids, the minister, the father, mother, groom--all were lies.
They expressed nothing of their true feelings.

The unwelcomed curious, who had crowded into the back of the church,
were the sincerest, for in their eyes, covetousness was openly
unveiled. The guests and friends wore the conventional shallow smiles
of guests and friends. They whispered to one another--a beautiful
wedding--a gorgeous gown--a perfect bride--a handsome groom; and
exclaimed in their hearts: How sad the father! How lofty, proud,
exultant the mother! How like her to move heaven and earth to make
this marriage! The attendants posed awkwardly, a personification of
the uselessness of their situation, and they pitied the bride while
they envied him for whose friendship they stood. The bridesmaids
graced their position and gloried in it, and serenely smiled, and
thought that to be launched in life in such dazzling manner might be
compensation for the loss of much. He of the flowing robe, of the
saintly expression, of the trained earnestness, the minister who had
power to unite these lives, saw nothing behind that white veil, saw
only his fashionable audience, while his resonant voice rolled down
the aisles of the church: "Who gives this woman to be wedded to this
man?" The father answered and straightway the years rolled back to his
youth, to hope, to himself as he stood at the altar with love and
trust, and then again to the present, to the failure of health and
love and life, to the unalterable destiny accorded him, to the one
shame of an honest if unsuccessful life--the countenancing of this
marriage. The worldly mother had, for once, a full and swelling
heart. For her this was the crowning moment. In one sense this
fashionable crowd had been pitted against her and she had won. What to
her had been the pleading of a daughter, the importunity of a father,
the