A laugh broke from Susan, but with that large and quiet candour which was characteristic of her, she did not seek to evade or deny Virginia's suspicion. That her friend should discover her feeling for John Henry seemed to her as natural as that she should be conscious of it herself—for they were intimate with that full and perfect intimacy which exists only between two women who trust each other.
"There goes Miss Willy," said Susan, looking through the window to where the little dressmaker tripped down the stone steps to the street. "Mother wants to have early supper, so I must be running away."
"Good-bye, darling. Oh, Susan, I never loved you as I do now. It will be all right—I trust and pray that it will! And, just think, you will walk out of church together at my wedding!"
For a minute, standing on the threshold, Susan looked back at her with an expression of tender amusement in her eyes. "Don't imagine that I'm unhappy, dear," she said, "because I'm not—it isn't that kind—and, after all, even an unrequited affection may be simply an added interest in life, if we choose to take it that way."
When she had gone, Virginia lingered over her wedding dress, while she wondered what the wise Susan could see in the simple John Henry? Was it possible that John Henry was not so simple, after all? Or did Susan, forsaking the ancient tradition of love, care about him merely because he was good?
For a week the hours flew by with golden wings, and at last the most sacred day of her life dawned softly in a sunrise of rose and flame. When she looked back on it afterwards, there were three things which stood out unforgettably in her memory—the kiss that her mother gave her when she turned to leave her girlhood's room for the last time; the sound of her father's voice as he spoke her name at the altar; and the look in Oliver's eyes when she put her hand into his. All the rest was enveloped in a shining mist which floated, like her wedding veil, between the old life and the new.
"It has been so perfect—so perfect—if I can only be worthy of this day and of you, Oliver," she said as the carriage started from the rectory gate to the station.
"You angel!" he murmured ecstatically.
Her eyes hung blissfully on his face for an instant, and then, moved by a sudden stab of reproach, she leaned from the window and looked back at her mother and father, who stood, with clasped hands, gazing after her over the white palings of the gate.