So Evan was innocent, while she had been feeling in her heart all the passion and pain—yea, a sentiment of vengeance—which women will feel, when they believe they have been loving unworthily.
Early on her marriage morning she left her bed to think over all this. Wrapped in a snow-white peignoir (or dressing-robe), with all her undressed hair floating about her shoulders and blown back by the warm summer breeze, she sat at the open window of her room, and looked dreamily out with sad, sad eyes on the sunny landscape and the lovely hills all steeped in golden haze.
How changed seemed its beauty now, and how she longed to be away from it—to be dead, in fact! Yet she was at an age when even to live, ought to be in itself a joy.
The fragrance of the dewy summer morning seemed to fill the outer world, and amid the intense stillness she heard only the voices of a lark high in the air and of a cushat dove in the coppice.
Her marriage morning—what a morning of woe to her! Her cheeks were pale—very, very pale; but with her parted scarlet lips, and her tangled waves of rich brown hair, she was beautiful as ever.
The knowledge that her lover had not deceived her, but was true, roused her for a time, and filled her soul with a tempest of unexpected sorrow, compunction, and joy—sorrow that she had wronged him, compunction for the cruel mode in which she had treated him, and joy that his honour was unstained, and that he still was true; but oh! what must he think of her?
Burying her face in her tremulous white hands, she wept like a child—-wept as we are told 'only women weep when their hearts break over the grave of a dead love,' and threw herself across her bed.
'God forgive me—God forgive me, and bless and comfort you, my love,' she murmured. 'Oh, Evan, I have wronged you—wronged you; but what does it avail us after all—after all?'
And she lay there crouched and gathered in a heap, as it were, till Olive and others who were to be her bridesmaids roused her and lifted her up and summoned Clairette.
So her marriage-day had come, and, unless she fell ill or died, the ceremony was to go inexorably on.