The priest had told her to say many things in her prayers—good man, he said them in his—but they were clean gone from her head at this time. The girlish romance of an English wedding was not for her. No gifts of sweet and silent hours were hers. She knew very little of Justin—he, less of her. He had kissed her but twice, and then apologetically. Yet to-morrow she would be his wife.
Stay, but was it to-morrow? She listened at the window and counted the church bells chiming the hour.
Twelve o'clock.
Her wedding was to-day.
II
The afternoon of the same day had found General d'Arny closeted with John Faber in a little room in the Avenue de l'Opéra. Here was the Paris agency of the great Charleston Company, and hither came d'Arny at his own suggestion.
A bent old man, not lacking dignity in a common way—dignity had gone to the journalistic dogs that afternoon. He entered the office trembling with excitement; he could not speak for some minutes, and when he did so, his tones rolled like thunder.
"It is finished," he said. "Read!" And he held out a paper with quivering fingers.
Faber watched him with half-closed eyes. He was thinking of another day, when this man, a mere captain of the Chasseurs-à-Cheval then, had ridden down the Rue de Fleurus and commanded his men to hunt out the Communards. Some forty years ago, and no doubt the soldier had forgotten every hour of it. None the less, the sword of destiny was poised and would fall.
"What shall I read?" Faber rejoined, after a little spell of waiting. He knew every word his friend Bertie Morris had cabled to America, but his face was void of knowledge.