How different this from the wedding-day which once she had dared to picture for herself! It was like a mocking fantasy, a dreadful travesty of that which might have been. Like an arc of prismatic colours it hung before her--the vision of that other wedding--the wedding of her dreams; the sunshine and the laughter and the flowers! The shining altar, the waiting bridegroom, his flashing smile of welcome! She saw it all--she saw it all!
How dear he had been to her! How, unutterably dear! And she remembered how in those far-off days he had always called her his Queen Rose.
Her heart gave a swift throb that was anguish. She stood up with a quick, involuntary movement. She had not dreamed that this long-past trouble possessed the power to hurt her so. She cast a desperate glance around her. This waiting in the cold and the dark had become intolerable. A wild impulse to flee--to flee--was upon her. The door was quite near. She turned towards it.
But in that moment Uncle Edward cleared his throat and rose.
"Here comes your precious bridegroom!" he said. "I suppose they're ready at last. We had better get moving."
And then it was that Maud's knees abruptly refused to support her, and she sank down again white and powerless on the chair by the door.
Jake's sturdy figure was coming down the aisle. She watched it with eyes that were wide and fixed.
He came straight to her, bent over her. "I'm real sorry you've been kept waiting," he said, in his womanly drawl. "It's the parson's doing. He forgot all about us. And there was no fire either. I had to force the door of the stoke shed to light it."
He bent a little lower over her, and suddenly she felt his hand against the icy cold of her cheek. She started back from it.
"Jake, I--can't come yet. I'm so cold." Stiffly her pale lips whispered the words; her whole body seemed bound in a very rigour of cold. And through it all she still thought she could hear phantom echoes of that other wedding that once had seemed so near.