Tacita.”
The man came, and she gave him her note; then, finding her love’s lamp-bearer, she set it carefully on the railing of the balcony.
“Dearer than Sirius, or the moon, good-night!” she said.
The marriage differed but little from the betrothal. It was the only marriage possible in San Salvador, a solemn pledge of mutual fidelity made in the presence of God and of the people. Dylar came to the Arcade for his bride, and led her over the flower-strown path to the Basilica, which they were the first to enter.
It was a white day, all being dressed as on the Monday before, except the bride, who was in rose-color, robe and veil, and the bridegroom, who wore dark blue.
That afternoon they set out for the castle, going through the Pines.
The preparations at the Olives were not less joyous. It was long since a Dylar had brought a bride home to them; and they looked on Tacita, with her white and golden beauty, as an angel.
For a time the bride and bridegroom lived only for each other. They had all their past lives to bring in and consecrate by connecting it with the new. It seemed to them that every incident in those lives had been especially designed to bring them together.
Then, after a fortnight, they returned as they had come, and walked over flowers to their new abode, to finish which half San Salvador had been like a beehive while they were gone.
The two new rooms were noble and picturesque, the difficulties of approach had been cleared away, and the background of the college-buildings gave a palatial air to their modest home. Whatever defects of newness there were were covered artfully, and the whole was made a bower of beauty.