to the plebeian orders of older civilizations.
These were the people that seemed to justify Schopenhauer's cynical
contention concerning the economy of Nature, who invests youth with
just enough transient beauty to ensure the perpetuation of the race,
making men and women serve her purpose under the delusion that they are
free agents and ministers to their own pleasure. Here were no pomp and
circumstance to interpose their false colours before the sordid vista
of the future. It lay glaringly before the imagination of the
onlookers; and to avoid depths of spiritual depression, they had need
to remind themselves of the happy blindness of those that moved their
pity.

Leigh might perhaps have indulged in far other thoughts had the wedding
been of a different character, or had he perceived any suggestion of a
romantic mood in the woman at his side. Quick to feel an atmosphere,
he found that he had caught from her a sombre view. How deeply she
thought or felt he could only guess, but hers was a personality that
suggested depth, and the far sadness of her gaze shut the door between
them which he had supposed about to open wider. The bishop turned
unexpectedly.

"The groom has forgotten the ring," he said to his daughter. "Will you
lend him yours?"

She glanced quickly at her hands, and a delicate colour crept into her
face.

"I must have left it in my room," she answered. She made no motion to
go for it, and, turning from her with a hint of impatience, he drew his
seal ring from his finger.

The incident, slight as it was, assumed unusual significance in the
minds of the spectators, and gave the ceremony a tone akin to comedy.
Perhaps they enjoyed the bishop's impatience, the sight of the
episcopal ring upon the girl's finger; or it may be that these things
reminded them of the portentous solemnity into which they had sunk.
Miss Wycliffe especially seemed to welcome the diversion, and showed an
ebullient vivacity when she offered her congratulations, which Leigh
had not previously observed in her.

It was the bishop, however, and not his daughter, who saved the
situation for the embarrassed couple he had just made man and wife. It
was he who ordered wine and cake, and drank their happiness with a
genuine humanity that took no reckoning of class in life's common
experiences. This was the quality that had won him love when, as a
clergyman, the homelier duties of his profession had claimed more of
his time. E