Now and then somebody would come in with a sound of closing umbrellas, and swinging of the doors, and come noisily up the aisle and drop into a pew. Girls, like Sarah Jane, in cheap hats with cheaper feathers, who sat and whispered, and laughed, and looked about them, and women of Mrs. Bates’ own type, with big shawls and nondescript bonnets, came to see the Bates’ triumph with no very friendly sympathy. The dreariest scene! Durant sat behind and looked at it all with his heart beating. In the general commotion in which his mind was, he too could have cried as Lucy was doing over Arthur. How different was all this from the circumstances that ought to have attended the “happiest day of his life;” would it be the happiest day of his life;--or perhaps the most miserable? And yet, if the spectator could have taken the hand of that pale girl in front of him, and led her up to that dingy altar, how soon would he have forgotten all the circumstances! The damp-breathing place, the clammy pews, the squalor of the rain, the absence of all beauty and tokens of delight, what would they have done but make his happiness show all the brighter? Would the effect be the same with Arthur too? They had very soon an opportunity of judging; for Arthur came in suddenly by himself, looking anything but ecstatic. Fortunately, Durant thought, Lucy did not see him, her head being bent and covered with her hands. But Durant himself watched the bridegroom with feelings which he could not have described, a mixture of pity, and envy, and fellow-feeling, and contempt. That a man who was the brother of Lucy Curtis should throw away everything for Nancy Bates! and yet to have it in your power to throw away everything for love, to give the woman you had chosen, if she were only Nancy Bates, such a proof of affection, absolute and unmixed! But Arthur scarcely seemed conscious himself of that fine position. He was very pale, with an excited look about the eyes which gave him a worn and exhausted aspect. He was feeling to the bottom of his soul the squalor, the dinginess, the damp, and the gloom. What a day it was to be married on! What a place to be married in! What dismal surroundings? old Bates and Charley, and the uncle from Wapping, and not one familiar face to look kindly at him, to wish him happiness in a voice that was dear. He sat down in the front, gazing blankly, like Durant, at the oaktree that shed a little colour from its autumn leaves. It reminded him, by some fantastic trick of association, of the trees at home. Would he ever see that home again? The disjunction from everything he had cared for, from all he knew, came over him with a forlorn sense of desolation and solitude--on his wedding-day! Arthur felt he was doing wrong to his bride, but how could he help it? He, too, covered his face with his hands. Durant felt that if Lucy saw him she would rush to him in indifference to all appearances, but she did not know he had passed her so quietly, all alone.