“Then let’s talk of something pleasanter,—those trunks, for instance, which I saw in the express office this morning, and which must have contained the wedding finery, eh?” Roy said, playfully.
His allusion to the “wedding finery” was a fortunate one, and diverted Georgie’s thoughts from burglars to the beautiful dresses which had that morning come up from New York for herself and Maude, whose trousseau was purchased by Mr. Burton himself, and was to be scarcely less elegant than that of Georgie. Edna was to be one of the bridesmaids, and Mrs. Churchill was having her dress made in the house, and taking as much pride in it as if Edna had been her daughter.
And Edna tried hard to be happy, and sometimes made herself believe that she was, though a sense of loneliness and pain would steal over her whenever she saw Roy riding down the avenue, and knew where he was going, and that soon it would be a sin for her to watch him thus. Charlie’s grave was visited oftener now, and the girlish widow tried to get up a sentimental kind of sorrow for the dead, and to think that her heart was buried with him, knowing all the while that a hundred living Charlies could not make up for that something she craved so terribly.
The bridal day was fixed for the 20th of June, and Edna felt that she should be glad when it was over. She had no thought, or even wish, that anything would occur to prevent the affair, which was talked of now from morning till night in Summerville, and was even agitating the higher circle in New York; for many of Georgie’s friends were coming out to see her married, and rooms were engaged for them at the hotel and every other available house.
And now but three days remained before the 20th. A few of the city guests, Georgie’s more intimate friends, who were to be bridesmaids, had already come, and were stopping at Oakwood; and on the afternoon of the 17th, they went with Roy and Georgie to a pleasant point on the river, where they had a little pic-nic, and dined upon the grass, and made merry generally, until a roll of thunder overhead, and the sudden darkening of the sky warned them to hurry home if they would escape the storm, which came up so fast, and so furiously, that the horses of the carriage in which Georgie rode, frightened by the constant lightning and rapid thunder crashes, became unmanageable, and dashed along the highway at a rate which threatened destruction to the occupants of the carriage.
“We are lost! we shall all be killed!” Georgie shrieked, just as from a thicket of trees a man darted out, and, seizing the foaming steeds by the bridle, managed, by being himself dragged along with them, to check their headlong speed, and finally quiet them.
“Thank you, sir. We owe our lives to you. Please give me your name and address,” Roy said, but the man merely mumbled something inarticulate in reply, and slouching his hat over his face so as to shield it from the rain, walked rapidly away, just as the other carriage driven by Russell came up.
Roy’s ladies were very much frightened and excited, especially Georgie, whose face was white as ashes, when Roy turned to speak to her, and who shook as if she had an ague chill.
“I am so very nervous,” she said, by way of explanation, when, after she was safe at Oakwood, Maude commented upon her extreme pallor, and her general terrified appearance.
Through the blinding rain, which fell in torrents, she had caught a glimpse of the stranger’s face, as he sprang toward the horses, and that glimpse had frozen her with horror for a moment, and made her very teeth chatter with fear, and her hair prickle at its roots. Then, as she remembered how impossible it was for the dead to rise and assume a living form, she tried to reassure herself that she had not seen aright. It was a resemblance, nothing more; a mere likeness which she in her weak, nervous state had magnified into a certainty. He was dead, the curse of her life; she had nothing to fear; she was Roy’s wife, or would be in a few days, and there was no lawful reason why she should not be so. Thus she tried to reassure herself, until she became more quiet, and dressed for the evening, and met Roy, when he came, with a kiss and smile, and asked him in a rather indifferent manner if he knew who the stranger was who had come so bravely to their aid.