With such a beginning, how could the evening pass?
The next morning, at the hour of nine, Mr. Tracy's carriage conveyed four people, each enduring their own peculiar sort of wretchedness to the parish-church of Northferry. Emily was--or seemed--the least agitated of the whole party.
Sir William Winslow was there before them; and, in a few minutes, he and his poor bride stood before the altar. She was deadly pale; but she shook not, she wept not. She made no responses; but the clerk did it for her; for he was so much accustomed to marrying, and giving in marriage, that he could not refrain from playing the part of bride or bridegroom, as the case might be, whenever he saw or thought the parties were incompetent to play it for themselves.
At length there came something which roused the unhappy girl from the stupor of her misery. The ring touched her ringer, glided up it, making her his with its cold chilling clasp. It was over--the effort was complete--the struggle finished! the die cast! She was the wife of a man she detested! She felt it but for an instant. The next, she was lying like a corpse at her father's and her husband's feet--pale as monumental marble; and, to all appearance, as cold and lifeless, too.
They took her up, and carried her into the vestry; but nought they could do seemed to have any effect in restoring animation. Yet it was evident, that though the swoon was deathlike, it was not death; and Mr. Woodyard was sent for in haste. Sir William Winslow gazed on her with a dark brow and a chilled heart. He felt that she hated him: he knew that he had marred her young dreams of love and joy; that he had made life to her like her own fine frame as it lay there before him--a body without a spirit. A cloud came over him, and snow fell from the cloud upon the fierce animal fire of his breast. As he remained, with eyes intent, and fixed upon her, some one opened the vestry-door, and a voice asked, "Is Sir William Winslow here?"
He turned suddenly round, and after looking at the man who made the inquiry--a man like an ostler or a groom--he replied. "Yes. What do you want with me?"
"Please you, Sir William," said the man, advancing, and tendering a letter, "I was told to bring you this as hard as I could gallop from the town of S----; and I have not been more than two hours from post to post. I was to deliver it wherever you might be."
The baronet took the letter, and as he gazed at the superscription, a contemptuous smile curled his lip. "That will do, my good fellow," he said, without opening it. "I know whom it comes from."
"Ye'd better read, Sir," said the man; "for the lawyer gentleman who gave it me, said it was matter of life and death."
"I don't think so," answered the baronet. But he broke the seal, nevertheless; and the moment his eye had run over the first lines, his countenance changed. He became, if possible, paler than her on whom he had just been gazing. He trembled in every limb. He could not at all restrain it; his whole frame shook.