But the service, which had this effect upon me, appeared to have an exactly opposite effect on Lord Raa. His nervousness increased visibly, though he did his best to conceal it by a lightness of manner that sometimes looked like derision.
Thus when the Bishop stepped down to us and said:
"James Charles Munster, wilt thou take Mary here present for thy lawful wife, according to the rite of our holy Mother the Church," my husband halted and stammered over his answer, saying beneath his breath, "I thought I was a heretic."
But when the corresponding question was put to me, and Father Dan thinking I must be nervous, leaned over me and whispered, "Don't worry, child, take your time," I replied a loud, clear, unfaltering voice:
"I will."
And again, when my husband had to put the ring and the gold and silver on the salver (he fumbled and dropped them as he did so, and fumbled and dropped them a second time when he had to take them up after they had been blessed, laughing too audibly at his own awkwardness), and then repeat after the Bishop:
"With this ring I thee wed; this gold and silver I thee give; with my body I thee worship; and with all my worldly goods I thee endow," he tendered the ring slowly and with an obvious effort.
But I took it without trembling, because I was thinking that, in spite of all I had heard of his ways of life, this solemn and sacred sacrament made him mine and no one else's.
It is all very mysterious; I cannot account for it; I only know it was so, and that, everything considered, it was perhaps the strangest fact of all my life.
I remember that more than once during the ceremony Father Dan spoke to me softly and caressingly, as if to a child, but I felt no need of his comforting, for my strength was from a higher source.