"Madam," answered the rector, in great perplexity, "this strange
occurrence brings to my mind a marriage-sermon of the famous Bishop
Taylor wherein he mingles so many thoughts of mortality and future woe
that, to speak somewhat after his own rich style, he seems to hang the
bridal-chamber in black and cut the wedding-garment out of a
coffin-pall. And it has been the custom of divers nations to infuse
something of sadness into their marriage ceremonies, so to keep death
in mind while contracting that engagement which is life's chiefest
business. Thus we may draw a sad but profitable moral from this
funeral-knell."

But, though the clergyman might have given his moral even a keener
point, he did not fail to despatch an attendant to inquire into the
mystery and stop those sounds so dismally appropriate to such a
marriage. A brief space elapsed, during which the silence was broken
only by whispers and a few suppressed titterings among the
wedding-party and the spectators, who after the first shock were
disposed to draw an ill-natured merriment from the affair. The young
have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth.
The widow's glance was observed to wander for an instant toward a
window of the church, as if searching for the time-worn marble that
she had dedicated to her first husband; then her eyelids dropped over
their faded orbs and her thoughts were drawn irresistibly to another
grave. Two buried men with a voice at her ear and a cry afar off were
calling her to lie down beside them. Perhaps, with momentary truth of
feeling, she thought how much happier had been her fate if, after
years of bliss, the bell were now tolling for her funeral and she were
followed to the grave by the old affection of her earliest lover, long
her husband. But why had she returned to him when their cold hearts
shrank from each other's embrace?