lovely day; Monday
confirmed the captain's assertion that the marriage was a certainty.
Toward ten o'clock, the clerk, ascending the church steps quoted the old
proverb to the pew-opener, meeting him under the porch: "Happy the bride
on whom the sun shines!"

In a quarter of an hour more the wedding-party was in the vestry, and
the clergyman led the way to the altar. Carefully as the secret of the
marriage had been kept, the opening of the church in the morning had
been enough to betray it. A small congregation, almost entirely composed
of women, were scattered here and there among the pews. Kirke's sister
and her children were staying with a friend at Aldborough, and Kirke's
sister was one of the congregation.

As the wedding-party entered the church, the haunting terror of Mrs.
Lecount spread from Noel Vanstone to the captain. For the first few
minutes, the eyes of both of them looked among the women in the pews
with the same searching scrutiny, and looked away again with the same
sense of relief. The clergyman noticed that look, and investigated the
License more closely than usual. The clerk began to doubt privately
whether the old proverb about the bride was a proverb to be always
depended on. The female members of the congregation murmured among
themselves at the inexcusable disregard of appearances implied in the
bride's dress. Kirke's sister whispered venomously in her friend's ear,
"Thank God for to-day for Robert's sake." Mrs. Wragge cried silently,
with the dread of some threatening calamity she knew not what. The one
person present who remained outwardly undisturbed was Magdalen
herself. She stood, with tearless resignation, in her place before the
altar--stood, as if all the sources of human emotion were frozen up
within her.

The clergyman opened the Book.

* * * * *

It was done. The awful words which speak from earth to Heaven were
pronounced. The children of the two dead brothers--inheritors of the
implacable enmity which had parted their parents--were Man and Wife.

From that moment events hurried with a headlong rapidity to the parting
scene. They were back at the house while the words of the Marriage
Service seemed still ringing in their ears. Before they had been five
minutes indoors the carriage drew up at the garden gate. In a minute
more the opportunity came for which Magdalen and the captain had been on
the watch--the opportunity of speaking together in private for the last
time. She sti