How shall the widow's horror be represented? It gave her the
ghastliness of a dead man's bride. Her youthful friends stood
apart, shuddering at the mourners, the shrouded bridegroom, and
herself; the whole scene expressed, by the strongest imagery, the
vain struggle of the gilded vanities of this world, when opposed
to age, infirmity, sorrow, and death. The awe-struck silence was
first broken by the clergyman.

"Mr. Ellenwood," said he, soothingly, yet with somewhat of
authority, "you are not well. Your mind has been agitated by the
unusual circumstances in which you are placed. The ceremony must
be deferred. As an old friend, let me entreat you to return
home."

"Home! yes, but not without my bride," answered he, in the same
hollow accents. "You deem this mockery; perhaps madness. Had I
bedizened my aged and broken frame with scarlet and
embroidery--had I forced my withered lips to smile at my dead
heart--that might have been mockery, or madness. But now, let
young and old declare, which of us has come hither without a
wedding garment, the bridegroom or the bride!"

He stepped forward at a ghostly pace, and stood beside the widow,
contrasting the awful simplicity of his shroud with the glare and
glitter in which she had arrayed herself for this unhappy scene.
None, that beheld them, could deny the terrible strength of the
moral which his disordered intellect had contrived to draw.

"Cruel! cruel!" groaned the heart-stricken bride.