VII.
Out spake the bride's mother, "The vileness is thine
If thou shame thine own sister, a bride at the shrine!"
Out spake the bride's lover, "The vileness be mine
If he shame mine own wife at the hearth or the shrine
And the charge be unprovèd.
VIII.
"Bring the charge, prove the charge, brother! speak it aloud:
Let thy father and hers hear it deep in his shroud!"
—"O father, thou seest, for dead eyes can see,
How she wears on her bosom a BROWN ROSARY,
O my father belovèd!"
IX.
Then outlaughed the bridegroom, and outlaughed withal
Both maidens and youths by the old chapel-wall:
"So she weareth no love-gift, kind brother," quoth he,
"She may wear an she listeth a brown rosary,
Like a pure-hearted lady."
X.
Then swept through the chapel the long bridal train;
Though he spake to the bride she replied not again:
On, as one in a dream, pale and stately she went
Where the altar-lights burn o'er the great sacrament,
Faint with daylight, but steady.
XI.
But her brother had passed in between them and her,
And calmly knelt down on the high-altar stair—
Of an infantine aspect so stern to the view
That the priest could not smile on the child's eyes of blue
As he would for another.