windows half covered with ivy, his mind was clear of all thoughts but
unselfish ones.

His mother, trailing purple, came in, and thought how like a sacred
picture he looked; this, for her, was superlative praise. Martha's
brother was there, ringing the one bell, which gave such a small
fugitive sound that it made the white chapel seem like a tinkling
bell-wether lost on the hills.

Mr. James was there, and several of the congregation, and Martha, with
her best dress hastily donned over her print, and a hat of which her
brother said 'it 'ud draw tears from an egg.'

Mr. James' daughter played a voluntary, in the midst of which an
altercation was heard outside.

'Her'll be lonesome wi'out me!'

'They wunna like it. It's blasphemy.'

Then the door opened, and Abel, very perspiring, and conscious of the
greatness of the occasion, led in Hazel in her wreath of drooping
lilies. The green light touched her face with unnatural pallor, and her
eyes, haunted by some old evil out of the darkness of life, looked
towards Edward as to a saviour.

She might have been one of those brides from faery, who rose wraith-like
out of a pool or river, and had some mysterious ichor in their veins,
and slipped from the grasp of mortal lover, melting like snow at a
touch. Edward, watching her, was seized with an inexplicable fear.