ch Minnie was holding her hand,
it would be difficult to say.

And thus the morning went by. Chatty took it all very sweetly, responding
with smiles to every one, feeling the hours pass like a dream until
it was time to go into the dream chariot, and be carried away to the
fulfilment of the dream. In the large, dull, London drawing-room below,
meanwhile, guests were assembling, guests in rustling garments of
many-coloured silk, with bonnets which were enough to drive any ordinary
mortal out of her senses, a little tulle tossed up with flowers or
feathers into the most perfect little crown for a fair head, a little
velvet with nodding plumes that made the wearer at once into a duchess.
The duchess herself was present, but she was dowdy, as duchesses have a
right to be. And then the arrivals, the carriages that came gleaming up,
the horses that pranced and curved their beautiful necks, as highbred
as the ladies! Geoff, who had come with his mother, posted himself at
one of the windows inside the filmy white curtains to watch the people
coming. He suddenly called out "mother" when it was almost time to start,
and the brougham was already waiting at the door for the bridegroom.
Lady Markland was standing close by the window talking to Dick,
who, as bridegrooms often are, was agitated and required support and
encouragement. "What is it, Geoff?" she asked in the midst of what she
was saying, without turning from her companion.

"Oh, look here. I say, there is the lady that was at the big house at
Underwood, the lady that picked me up the day I ran away--the one that
was at the Elms. Look, mamma. Ah, you're just too late," cried Geoff,
"you are always too late. She's gone now."

It was Dick and not Lady Markland who came forward to the window. "The
lady who was at the Elms?" he said, and Geoff, looking up, saw a face
that was like ashes looking not at him, but out of the window, with wide
staring eyes.

"Look there--just going away--in a big veil--don't you see her? but I
saw her face quite plain--the same lady that took me up beside her on
the big tall phaeton. I did not like her much," the boy added in an
undertone.

"I think"--in a still lower voice, almost a whisper--"you are mistaken,
Geoff; that lady is dead."

"I saw her all the same," said the boy.

And here some of the jocular persons who make weddings more dreadful
than they need to be came forward and touched Dick on the arm. "Come
along, old fellow," he sa