"Cissy, I _cannot_ come."

"Nonsense, Vera; don't be so foolish; make haste, or we shan't get in."

Somebody just then dashed up in a hansom, and came hurrying up behind
them. Somehow or other, what with Mrs. Hazeldine dragging her by the arm,
and an excited-looking gentleman pushing his way through the crowd behind
her, Vera got swept on into the church.

"You are very late, ladies," whispered the pew-opener, who supposed them
to belong to the wedding guests; "it is nearly over. You had better take
these seats in this pew; you will see them come out well from here." And
she evidently considered them to be all one party, for she ushered them
all three into a pew; first, Mrs. Hazeldine, then Vera, and next to her
the little foreign-looking gentleman who had bustled up so hurriedly.

It was an awful thing to have happened to Vera that she should have been
thus entrapped by a mere accident into being present at Maurice's
wedding; and yet, when she was once inside the church, she felt not
altogether sorry for it.

"I can at least see the last of him, and pray that he may be happy," she
said to herself, as she sank on her knees in the shelter of the pew, and
buried her face in her hands.

The church was crowded, and yet the wedding itself was not a particularly
attractive one, for, owing to the fact that the bride was a widow, there
was, of course, no bevy of bridesmaids in attendance in diaphanous
raiment. Instead of these, however, there was a great concourse of the