"You look happy to-day."
"Yes—shouldn't I be? Weren't you—pleased, when you read—"
"They've treated you abominably—no other way to express it."
She smiled at him, but looked away. And he perceived, or thought he did, that the memory of their last meeting remained with her, touching her manner with a faint self-consciousness.
"You are hard to satisfy," she said. "I've felt like singing all day.... Will you tell Donald to come now?"
"Yes. I'm going to see you after this is over?"
But no, she, the busy, was to stay here for the night, it seemed, keeping Mrs. Flower company in her daughterlessness. And Charles, having anticipated this occasion principally as her holiday-time and his own, turned away with the sense that most of the wedding was over....
Yet this, of course, was but the side-play of elders, counting for nothing. Now the prime action of the day, the culminating hour, was at hand.
Donald was whisked away for a brief glimpse at his love. Returning, he confronted almost immediately the moment of his public appearance and confession. Word came to Wallie's room that the gentlemen were to descend forthwith, for better or worse. "Now then!" whispered Charles, as they started down—"chest out, chin up!" And Donald grinned back feebly, as if to prove to himself that he still could. Now the dim hush deepened and thickened, the little house seemed to hold its breath. There was no music to cover these preliminaries, because of the mourning. In complete stillness, groom and escort stepped through the curtains into the assembled company, which, though limited in numbers as it was, seemed to fill the little car-shaped parlor. Through a narrow lane between vaguely discerned relatives and friends, the young men moved to their appointed place. Here they stood, almost stepping on a stout clergyman, undergoing his frank, interested scrutiny, through a dreadful pause. Then at last a stir in the company made it clear that the bride was at hand; and after that Donald could feel that nobody was paying any attention to him.
So without great pomp or ritual, fuss or feathers, came the great moment to which all one woman's life had looked forward, to which, conceivably, it might all look back. Standing statue-like a few feet from her, the fingers of one hand feeling in Judge Blenso's waistcoat-pocket for the ring, those of the other resting lightly on the cold Latrobe, Charles listened to the beautiful words which converted Angela Flower into Mrs. Donald Manford.