Darrell and his friend felt ill at ease and out of place amid the gayety that filled the house that evening, and at an early hour they retired to their rooms.
"It is awful!" Darrell exclaimed, as they stood for a moment together at the door of his room listening to the sounds of merriment from below; "it is all so hollow, such a mockery; it seems like dancing over a hidden sepulchre!"
"And we are to stand by to-morrow and witness this farce carried out to the final culmination!" Mr. Britton commented, in low tones; "it is worse than a
farce,—it is a crime! My boy, how will you be able to stand it?" he suddenly inquired.
Darrell turned away abruptly. "I could not stand it; I would not attempt it, except that my presence will comfort and help her," he answered. And so they parted for the night.
The following morning dawned clear and cloudless, the spotless, unbroken expanse of snow gleaming in the sunlight as though strewn with myriads of jewels; it seemed as if Earth herself had donned her bridal array in honor of the occasion.
"An ideal wedding-day!" was the universal exclamation; and such it was.
The wedding was to take place at noon. A little more than an hour before the bridal party was to leave the house Darrell was walking up and down the double libraries upstairs, whither he had been summoned by a note from Kate, begging him to await her there.
His thoughts went back to that summer night less than six months gone, when he had waited her coming in those very rooms. Not yet six months, and he seemed to have lived years since then! He recalled her as she appeared before him that night in all the grace and witchery of lovely maidenhood just opening into womanhood. How beautiful, how joyous she had been! without a thought of sorrow, and now——
A faint sound like the breath of the wind through the leaves roused him, and Kate stood before him once more. Kate in her bridal robes, their shimmering folds trailing behind her like the gleaming foam in the wake of a ship on a moonlit sea, while her veil, like a filmy cloud, enveloped her from head to foot.