"Forgive me, Harry," she said, "say you forgive me."
Then he raised her veil and kissed her forehead before them all. But he could not speak, because all in a moment the sense of what this would mean poured upon his brain in a great wave, and he would fain have been alone.
It was Miss Kennedy, indeed, but glorified into a great lady; oh!—oh—Miss Messenger!
The girls, frightened, were shrinking together; even Rebekah was afraid at the great and mighty name of Messenger.
Angela went among them, and kissed them all with words of encouragement. "Can you not love me, Nelly," she said, "as well when I am rich as when I was poor?"
Then the chief officers of the brewery advanced, offering congratulations in timid accents, because they knew now that Miss Kennedy, the dressmaker, of whom such hard things had been sometimes said in their own presence and by their own wives, was no other than the sole partner in the brewery, and that her husband had worked among them for a daily wage. What did these things mean? They made respectable men afraid. One person there was, however, who at sight of Miss Messenger, for whom he was waiting with anxious heart, having a great desire to present his own case of unrewarded zeal, turned pale, and broke through the crowd with violence and fled. It was Uncle Bunker.
And then the stewards appeared at the open doors, and the procession was formed.
First the stewards themselves—being all clerks of the brewery—walked proudly at the head, carrying their white wands like rifles. Next came Harry and the bride, at sight of whom the guests shouted and roared; next came Dick Coppin with Nelly, and Lord Jocelyn with Rebekah, and the chief brewer with Lady Davenant, of course in her black velvet and war-paint, and Lord Davenant with Mrs. Bormalack, and the chief accountant with another bridesmaid, and Captain Sorensen with another, and then the rest.
Then the organ burst into a wedding march, rolling and pealing about the walls and roof of the mighty hall, and amid its melodious thunder, and the shouts of the wedding-guests, Harry led his bride slowly through the lane of curious and rejoicing faces, till they reached the dais.
When all were arranged with the bride seated in the middle, her husband standing at her right and the bridemaids grouped behind them, Lord Jocelyn stepped to the front and read in a loud voice part of the deed of gift, which he then gave with a profound bow to Angela, who placed it in her husband's hands.