And never was real bride more transcendently lovely than Josephine Fleming when she stood at last ready and waiting to be called, in her fleecy tarlatan, with her long vail sweeping back from her face, and showing like a silver net upon her golden hair. And Everard, in his dark, boyish beauty, looked worthy of the bride, as he bent over her and whispered something in her ear which had reference to a future day when this they were doing in jest should be done in sober earnest. For a moment they were alone. Dr. Matthewson had managed to clear the little room, and now he came to them and said:
“I feel I shall be doing wrong to let this go any further without telling you that I have a right to make the marriage lawful, if you say so. A few years ago I was a clergyman in good and regular standing in the Methodist Episcopal Church at Clarence, in the western part of this State. I am not in regular and good standing now; the world, the flesh, and the devil, especially the latter, got the upper hand of me, but I still have the power to marry you fast and strong. You two are engaged, I hear. Suppose, for the fun of it, we make this marriage real? What do you say?”
He was looking at Everard, but he spoke to Josephine, feeling that hers would be the more ready assent of the two. She was standing with her arm linked in Everard’s, and at Dr. Matthewson’s words she lifted her blue eyes coyly to her lover’s face, and said:
“Wouldn’t that be capital, and shouldn’t we steal a march on everybody?”
She waited for him to speak, but his answer did not come at once. It is true he had said something of this very nature to her only the night before, but now, when it came to him as something which might be if he chose, he started as if he had been stung, and the color faded from his lips, which quivered as he said, with an effort to smile:
“I’d like it vastly, only you see I am not through college, and I should be expelled at once. Then father never would forgive me. He’d disinherit me, sure.”
“Hardly so bad as that, I think,” spoke the soothing voice of the doctor, while one of Josephine’s hands found its way to Everard’s, which it pressed softly, as she said:
“We can keep it a secret, you know, till you are through college, and it would be such fun.”
Half an hour before Everard had gone with the doctor to the bar and taken a glass of wine, which was beginning to affect his brain and cloud his better judgment, while Josephine was still looking at him with those great, dreamy, pleading eyes, which always affected him so strangely. She was very beautiful, and he loved her with all the strength of his boyish, passionate nature. So it is not strange that the thought of possessing her years sooner than he had dared to hope made his young blood stir with ecstasy, even though he knew it was wrong. He was like the bird in the toiler’s snare, and he stood irresolute, trying to stammer out he hardly knew what, except that it had some reference to his father, and mother, and Rossie, for he thought of her in that hour of his temptation, and wondered how he could face her with that secret on his soul.
“They are growing impatient. Don’t you hear them stamping? What are you waiting for?” came from the manager of the play, as he put his head into the room, while a prolonged and deafening call greeted their ears from the expectant audience.