"Good heavens! are you mad?" ejaculates Mrs. Douglas. "Go back at the last moment, and the breakfast ready, and the carriages waiting, and every one at the church, and your trousseau not even paid for on the strength of the credit of this marriage! My dear Lauraine, you must be a perfect idiot!"
The girl's face grows cold, her hand falls to her side. "I dare say I am," she says bitterly. "I feel it now."
"Your nerves are shaken—you are getting hysterical," exclaims Mrs. Douglas. "Of course it is a very trying time, my dear. You must have some sal volatile before you start. For Heaven's sake don't make a scene in church, or break down, or do anything ridiculous. You always are so odd. Now, any other girl would be thinking how she looked and——"
"What a good price those looks had fetched," interrupts Lauraine sarcastically. "Yes—thank goodness, I have some sense of shame left. I do not feel proud of my position to-day, or my part in this heartless barter."
"Barter! What makes you use such absurd words!" exclaims her mother angrily. "After all I have done for you—after all my sacrifices!"
"Hush!" the girl says wearily, "don't let us discuss that subject now. I think none of your sacrifices would look very great before this of mine, if it came to a question of comparison. But it is no matter. Of course you are right; an esclandre now would be too terrible."
She turns coldly away, and takes up the beautiful bouquet that Sir Francis has sent her an hour ago. The smell of the white roses and orange blossoms turns her faint and sick. All her life long, she thinks, that scent will, fill her with just such shuddering horror as she feels now. She lets the bouquet fall and clasps her hands despairingly together.
"I did not think it would be so bad as this," she moans. "O God! is there no escape?"
But in the sunny, luxuriantly appointed chamber all is silence. A few minutes after, and down the crimson-carpeted steps a white and radiant figure floats to the waiting carriage.
"How lovely! How young! How beautifully dressed!"