"Refuse you! How could I refuse a request in which my happiness is so much bound up?" he answered, eagerly.
"It is well!" said Miss Fernly. "Your bride is on the way here by this time."
"Is this idea one of your planning?" asked Hildegarde's lover, curiously.
"Yes," she answered, very quickly.
It seemed a very strange proceeding to him, but he then did not pretend to understand the ways of women. He was only too anxious to carry out Hildegarde's slightest wish. He was so deeply in love with her that he did not question the strangeness of her aunt's action.
Before he had time to think over the matter, two carriages drove up to the door from different directions. Out of one stepped the minister, and from the other a slender figure, robed in snowy white, and almost enveloped in a white tulle veil.
He would have sprung to meet her, but Miss Fernly held him back.
"Not yet," she said. "She will meet us at the altar; the minister will bring her in."
Miss Fernly seemed to be running this novel affair, and he did not suppose that it would be worth while to try to dissuade her, since she must have talked it over with Hildegarde.