He kissed her sweet lips.
"I must be careful," he said. "You look like a fairy. Perhaps you would vanish if a mere mortal touched you. Now, let me look at you, darling—at your dress, your veil, and your wreath. The picture is perfect. I wish that I could put it into words."
He did, afterward—into words over which all England wept. Then, for a few minutes, the three—Lady Linleigh, Mattie, and Earle—stood looking at her in silence, they hardly knew why. Then Earle said:
"When I see that pretty veil again, it will be on the head of my beloved wife."
Then they all three looked at the veil. Heaven help him! he little dreamed how and when he should see it again. If they could have had the faintest foreknowledge of that, the tragedy might have been averted.
Then Earle went away, and the bridal robes were taken to Lady Linleigh's boudoir.
"They will not be seen there," said the countess. "I will lock the door and keep the key; to-morrow it will not matter."
And Mattie helped her—poor, helpless child!—place them over a chair so that the shining robes might not be injured.
It was Earle who proposed a ramble to the woods; dinner was to be later than usual.
"Let us all three go," he said. "Mattie with us, Doris; it may be years before we meet all together so happy again."