Love was all ready, looking faultlessly handsome in his wedding-suit, and he began to grow impatient because he had received no message from his darling that morning.
"How strange if she and her mother have overslept themselves! I will go and knock on the door," he said, suiting the action to the words.
He could not hear the least sound in the room, and he received no answer to his knock. He rapped impatiently again.
"Dainty! Mrs. Chase!" he called, anxiously, several times.
But there was no reply.
He bent his ear to the key-hole, but there was not a sound within the bride's room—all was still as the grave.
The handsome bridegroom grew pale and alarmed, crying out to his best man, who stood by his side:
"Surely something has happened, for I have heard not a sound from the room. We must force the door."
They put their shoulders against it; the lock yielded, it flew open, and they stood within the room.
The curtains and the shutters were closely drawn, and the night-lamp flickered dimly behind a screen. At one end of the room several chairs were littered with the wedding finery—the tiny white silken hose and slippers, the satin gown, the misty thread-lace veil.