The funeral, the accident, the interrupted wedding, all dawned on his mind, and a hollow groan burst from him as he turned his eyes on Noel.
“Cora——”
Noel read the pained questioning in the one word. The stricken bridegroom was thinking of Cora and the cruel ordeal she had been called on to bear, the interrupted wedding, the gossip, the nine days’ wonder.
“She is well,” Noel said encouragingly.
“Tell me all about that day,” Laurier pleaded faintly, and his friend obeyed with some evasions.
Not for worlds would he have betrayed the whispers he had heard of the proud bride’s fury at her lover on that cruel wedding day when she had turned away from the altar, a bride without a bridegroom, a stricken creature who in her wrath hated the whole world, and felt revengeful enough to have plunged a knife into the heart of the man who had disappointed her and made her the sensation of an hour.
He glossed that fact over very lightly by saying:
“Miss Ellyson was naturally cruelly wounded, believing herself a jilted bride.”
“My proud, beautiful Cora, it was indeed a most cruel ordeal, and I would have died to spare her such pain. Are you quite sure she understands everything now, Noel?”
“Yes; I went and told her myself how everything fell out, and it was fully explained in the newspapers of the next day—so every one knows now that it was an untoward accident that prevented the wedding, and that it will take place as soon as you are recovered.”