alas the day! what a woful sight did she
present to the spectators. The moment she had come down, the servants,
and all those who had obtained permission to be present at the ceremony,
now entered the large drawing-room to witness it. Tom Gourlay entered
a little after his sister, followed in a few minutes by old Anthony,
accompanied by Fenton, who leant upon him, and was provided with an
arm-chair in a remote corner of the room. After them came Thomas Corbet
and his sister, Ginty Cooper, together with old Sam Roberts, and the man
named Skipton, with whom the reader has already been made acquainted.

But how shall we describe the bride--the wretched, heart-broken
victim of an ambition that was as senseless as it was inhuman? It was
impossible for one moment to glance at her without perceiving that the
stamp of death, misery, and despair, was upon her; and yet, despite
of all this, she carried with her and around her a strange charm, an
atmosphere of grace, elegance, and beauty, of majestic virtue, of innate
greatness of mind, of wonderful truth, and such transparent purity of
heart and thought, that when she entered the room all the noise and chat
and laughter were instantly hushed, and a sense of solemn awe, as if
there were more than a marriage here, came over all present. Nay, more.
We shall not pretend to trace the cause and origin of this extraordinary
sensation. Originate as it may, it told a powerful and startling tale to
her father's heart; but in truth she had not been half a minute in the
room when, such was the dignified but silent majesty of her sorrow, that
there were few eyes there that were not moist with tears. The
melancholy impressiveness of her character, her gentleness, her mournful
resignation, the patience with which she suffered, could not for one
moment be misunderstood, and the contagion of sympathy, and of common
humanity, in the fate of a creature apparently more divine than human,
whose sorrow was read as if by intuition, spread through them with a
feeling of strong compassion that melted almost every I heart, and sent
the tears to every eye.

Her father approached her, and whispered to her, and caressed her, and
seemed playful and even light-hearted, as if the day were a day of
joy; but out strongly against his mirth stood the solemn spirit of her
sorrow; and when he went to bring over Dunroe, and when he took her
passive hand, in order to place it in his--the agony, the horror, with
which