e
now just to see weddings."

"There must be a sameness about the performances. Don't you get sick of
them?"

"Never. I wonder whose wedding it is; there must be thirty carriages
waiting. I'll ask one of these big footmen. Whose wedding is it?"

"Captain Kynaston's, ma'am."

"Oh, I used to know him once; he is such a handsome fellow. Come along,
Vera."

"Cissy, I _cannot_ come."

"Nonsense, Vera; don't be so foolish; make haste, or we shan't get in."

Somebody just then dashed up in a hansom, and came hurrying up behind
them. Somehow or other, what with Mrs. Hazeldine dragging her by the arm,
and an excited-looking gentleman pushing his way through the crowd behind
her, Vera got swept on into the church.

"You are very late, ladies," whispered the pew-opener, who supposed them
to belong to the wedding guests; "it is nearly over. You had better take
these seats in this pew; you will see them come out well from here." And
she evidently considered them to be all one party, for she ushered them
all three into a pew; first, Mrs. Hazeldine, then Vera, and next to her
the little foreign-looking gentleman who had bustled up so hurriedly.

It was an awful thing to have happened to Vera that she should have been
thus entrapped by a mere accident into being present at Maurice's
wedding; and yet, when she was once inside the church, she felt not
altogether sorry for it.

"I can at least see the last of him, and pray that he may be happy," she
said to herself, as she sank on her knees in the shelter of the pew, and
buried her face in her hands.

The church was crowded, and yet the wedding itself was not a particularly
attractive one, for, owing to the fact that the bride was a widow, there
was, of course, no bevy of bridesmaids in attendance in diaphanous
raiment. Instead of these, however, there was a great concourse of the
best-dressed women in London, all standing in rows round the upper end of
the nave; and there was a little old lady, in brown satin and point lace,
who stood out conspicuously detached from the other groups, who bent her
head solemnly over the great bouquet of exotics in her hands, and prayed
within herself, with a passionate fervour such as no other soul present
could pray, save only the pale, beautiful girl on her knees, far away
down at the further end of the church. Surely, if God ever gave happiness
to one of his creatures because another prayed for it, Maurice Kynaston,
with the prayers of th