Yet still within that form concealed,
Thy mind a greater beauty lies.”
In a rapture Alice listened on. The famous “Dead March” followed, interposing its melancholy instrumentation, and arresting the vocal action of the drama by the pomp of that magnificent dirge.
To her the whole thing seemed stupendous, unearthly, glorious beyond expression. She almost trembled with excitement. She was glad she had come. Tears of ecstasy were in her eyes.
And now, at length, the three parts are over, and the crowd begin to move outward. The organ peals as they shuffle slowly along, checked every minute, and then again resuming their slow progress, pushing on in those little shuffling steps of two or three inches by which well-packed crowds get along, every one wondering why they can't all step out together, and what the people in front can be about.
In two several channels, through two distinct doors, this great human reservoir floods out. Sir Richard has undertaken the task of finding Lady May's carriage, and bringing it to a point where they might escape the tedious waiting at the door; and David Arden, with Lady May on one arm and Alice on the other, is getting on slowly in the thick of this well-dressed and aristocratic mob.
“I think, Alice,” said Uncle David, “you would be more out of the crush, and less likely to lose me, if you were to get quite close behind us—do you see?—between Lady May and me, and hold me fast.”
The pressure of the stream was so unequal, and a front of three so wide, that Alice gladly adopted the new arrangement, and with her hand on her uncle's arm, felt safer and more comfortable than before.
This slow march, inch by inch, is strangely interrupted. A well-known voice, close to her ear, says—
“Miss Arden, a word with you.”