If an angel had come straight down from heaven and interfered with their wedding they could not have been more astonished. For, as he stood beneath the many soft lights in front of the wall of living green and blossoms, with his white face and grave sweet dignity, they forgot for once to study the fashion of his coat, and sat awed before his beautiful face; for Michael wore tonight the look of transport with chin uplifted, glowing eyes, and countenance that showed the spirit shining through. The organist looked down, and instinctively hushed his music. Had he made some mistake? Then Michael spoke. Doubtless he should have gone to the minister who was to perform the ceremony, and given him the message, but Michael little knew the ways of weddings. It was the first one he had ever attended, and he went straight to the point. “On account of the sudden and serious illness of the groom,” he said, “it will be impossible for the ceremony to go on at this time. The bride’s family ask that you will kindly excuse them from further intrusion or explanation this evening.” With a slight inclination of his head to the breathless audience Michael passed swiftly down the aisle and out into the night, and the organist, by tremendous self-control, kept on playing softly until the excited people who had drifted usherless into the church got themselves out into their carriages once more. Michael walked out into the night, bareheaded still, his eyes lifted to the stars shining so far away above the city, and said softly, with wondering, reverent voice: “Oh, God! Oh, God!” Chapter XXIV Following hard upon the interrupted wedding came other events that not only helped to hush matters up, but gave the world a plausible reason why the ceremony did not come off as soon as the groom was convalescent from what was reported in the papers to be an attack of acute indigestion, easily accounted for by the round of banquets and entertainments which usually precede a society wedding. During that eventful night while Starr still lay like a crushed lily torn rudely from its stem, her mother, after a stormy scene with her husband, in which he made it plain to her just what kind of a man she was wanting her daughter to marry, and during which she saw the fall of her greatest social ambitions, was suddenly stricken with apoplexy. The papers next morning told the news as sympathetically as a paper can tell one’s innermost secrets. It praised the wonderful ability of the woman who had so successfully completed all the unique arrangements for what had promised to be the greatest wedding of the season, if not of all seasons; and upon whose overtaxed strength, the last straw had been laid in the illness of the bridegroom. It stated that now of course the wedding would be put off indefinitely, as nothing could be thought of while the bride’s mother lay in so critical a state.