oft-repeated momentary glances the face of Charley, who stood in his Etonian certainty of manhood, premature but not precocious, near his mother’s side. Mr Summerhayes even scanned, when all was over, the downcast countenance of Loo, who stood behind, watching with stout endurance, and resolute not to cry during the entire ceremony. What was the meaning which lay in those quick furtive darts of the bridegroom’s eye it was impossible to say; his closest friend could not have elucidated this strange secret by-play, of which nobody in the company was conscious, except, perhaps, one child; but one thing it proved at any rate, that his heart at this special moment was not engrossed, to the exclusion of everything else, by his bride. Mary was much less mistress of herself. She cried quietly under her veil as she stood and listened to the familiar words. She repeated those that fell to her with a little shiver. In her heart she could not but feel what a terrible act she was completing as she vowed her love and obedience over again, and separated her future from her past. But Mary, with her downcast eyes, was insensible to everybody’s opinion at that moment. Had she been standing in a wilderness she could not have felt more isolated. She was conscious only of her new husband by her side—of an indistinct figure before her—of God above and around, a kind of awful shadow looking on. Mr Summerhayes was aware of her tears, and they moved him so that his colour heightened involuntarily, and he pressed her hand with a warning pressure when it came to that part of the ceremony. But Mary herself was not aware that she was crying till she felt this touch of remonstrance, which startled her back into consciousness. Such was this marriage, at which, as at other marriages, people looked on with various shades of sympathy and criticism, and which, with all its concealed terrors and outward rejoicing, was the free act of hearts uncoerced and acting only at their own pleasure—a free act, suggested by no third party, unless, perhaps, it might happen to be a certain grim inflexible Fate who, if the reins are but yielded to her for a moment, pursues her victim through a throng of inevitable consequences. But perhaps, when a woman is being married like Mary Clifford, it is a kind of comfort to her to feel as if she could not help herself, rather than to know that she is entering all these new dangers voluntarily, and in obedience to nobody’s will but her own. “Well, I am sure, I wish them every comfort in life,” said Miss Harwood, as she stood leaning on her brother’s arm at the hall door of Fontanel, watching the carriage drive off which contained the happy pair. “She can’t feel much like a bride, poor thing, leaving all these children behind her. I am sure I wish her every happiness. I hope she’ll never live to repent it,” said Miss Harwood, with a sigh.