with him."

By such reasoning as this William Carley contrived to set his conscience
at rest during that silent walk along the rustic lane between the Grange
and Crosber church. It was not a conscience very difficult to appease.
And as for his daughter's pallid looks, those of course were only natural
to the occasion.

Mr. Whitelaw and Mrs. Tadman were at the church when the bailiff and his
daughter arrived. The farmer had made a scarecrow of himself in a new
suit of clothes, which he had ordered in honour of this important event,
after a great deal of vacillation, and more than one countermand to the
Malsham tailor who made the garments. At the last he was not quite clear
in his mind as to whether he wanted the clothes, and the outlay was a
serious one. Mrs. Tadman had need to hold his every-day coat up to the
light to convince him that the collar was threadbare, and that the
sleeves shone as if purposely polished by some ingenious process.

"Marriage is an expensive thing," she told him again, with a sigh; "and
young girls expect to see a man dressed ever so smart on his
wedding-day."

"I don't care for her expectations," Mr. Whitelaw muttered, in reply to
this remark; "and if I don't want the clothes, I won't have 'em. Do you
think I could get over next Christmas with them as I've got?"

Mrs. Tadman said "No" in a most decisive manner. Perhaps she derived a
malicious pleasure from the infliction of that tailor's bill upon her
cousin Whitelaw. So the new suit had been finally ordered; and Stephen
stood arrayed therein before the altar-rails in the gray old church at
Crosber, a far more grotesque and outrageous figure to contemplate than
any knight templar, or bearded cavalier of the days of the first English
James, whose effigies were to be seen in the chancel. Mrs. Tadman stood a
little way behind him, in a merino gown, and a new bonnet, extorted
somehow from the reluctant Stephen. She was full of smiles and cordial
greetings for the bride, who did not even see her. Neither did Ellen
Carley see the awkward figure of her bridegroom. A mist was before her
eyes, as if there had been an atmosphere of summer blight or fog in the
village church. She knelt, or rose, as her prayer-book taught her, and
went through the solemn service as placidly as if she had been a wondrous
piece of mechanism constructed to perform such movements; and then, like
a creature in a dream, she found herself walking out of the church
presen