There was the usual crowd round the register, every one being anxious to sign, but the business was accomplished at last, and, with her arm in her husband’s, Olivia passed out of the church.
They stood for a second at the door. The sun blazed down upon them and the cheering crowd, and Bartley Bradstone put up his hand to screen his eyes, and looked round upon the excited people. As he did so his restless, suspicious glance fell upon what he expected: there in the second rank of the living lane stood the woman whose face had haunted him all the past night and all the morning, and even as he stood beside his bride at the altar.
With her hands on her hips, her black eyes all aglow with mocking derision, she stood and stared at him. As his eyes met hers she broke into a laugh that seemed to him to ring above the din of the cheers, and, pushing herself into the front rank, stooped and snatched up some flowers which had been thrown on the path.
“Here’s wishing you and your bride every happiness, Mr. Bradstone!” she shouted, and flung the flowers in his face. Then, with a laugh, she slipped back again, and was lost in the crowd.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE ASSASSIN.
The words and action of the woman were unnoticed in the excitement, and she slipped back behind the crowd and was instantly swallowed up.
Mr. Bartley Bradstone’s face could not have looked whiter than it had done, and after the first start of alarm as the flowers struck him in the face, and the woman’s mocking voice rang in his ears, he collected himself sufficiently to force a smile, which he bestowed upon the lines of people.
As the carriages dashed off to the Grange the crowd of spectators closed up behind them and followed in the same direction, for the squire had invited every man and woman and child to a good, old roast-beef-and-beer banquet, which was to be served in a huge marquee on the lawn.
In a whirl of excitement the guests thronged into the drawing-room. There is an old-fashioned custom which ordains that the bride shall hold a kind of levee in the interval between the ceremony and the breakfast, and Olivia took her place in the drawing-room to receive the usual homage.
She was still pale, and the absent, preoccupied expression was just as marked as it had been in the church, and her voice as she spoke to one and another seemed like that of one who was repeating some well-learned lesson.