best-dressed women in London, all standing in rows round the upper end of
the nave; and there was a little old lady, in brown satin and point lace,
who stood out conspicuously detached from the other groups, who bent her
head solemnly over the great bouquet of exotics in her hands, and prayed
within herself, with a passionate fervour such as no other soul present
could pray, save only the pale, beautiful girl on her knees, far away
down at the further end of the church. Surely, if God ever gave happiness
to one of his creatures because another prayed for it, Maurice Kynaston,
with the prayers of those two women being offered up for him, would have
been a happy man.

And the mother, by this time, knew that it was all a mistake--a mistake,
alas, which she, in her blindness, had fostered.

No wonder that she trembled as she prayed.

The service, that portion of it which makes two people man and wife,
was over; the clergyman was reading the final exhortation to the
newly-married pair.

They stood together close to the altar rails. The bride was in a pale
lavender satin, covered with lace, which spread far away behind her
across the tesselated pavement. The bridegroom stood by her side, erect
and handsome, but pale and stern, and with a far-away look in his eyes
that would have made any one fancy, had any one been near enough or
attentive enough to remark it, that he was only an indifferent spectator
of the scene, in no way interested in what was going on. He looked as if
he were thinking of something else.

He was thinking of something else. He was thinking of a railway carriage,