She was most oddly dressed in white mull muslin draperies that appeared to be kept together only by a broad sash of soft white silk that was swathed several times round her body, and the wide ends of which hung on the left side nearly to her feet. Long white silk gloves covered her arms and met the hanging draperies, while her head was crowned, not covered, by a white silk fez. Her dark skin glowed with an unusual and beautiful tinge of pink, her black eyes danced with excitement, and between her vividly crimson lips two straight rows of strong ivory teeth gleamed as she laughed. A handsome, graceful, untamed creature, with all the instincts and scarcely more than the capacity for thought of a healthy young animal, skipping into a Christian church to bind herself with lifelong vows in exactly the same spirit with which she had entered the draper’s shop the week before to enjoy the delicious excitement of buying a new bonnet. A baker’s boy, who happened to be passing, put down his basket to watch her in open-mouthed admiration and astonishment. George himself, intoxicated as he was by his passion, felt a sudden misgiving, not as to the wisdom, but as to the generosity, of entering with this eager child into a compact, the nature and terms of which, it now occurred to him for the first time, she did not in the least understand. Instead of sobering her by its solemn significance, marriage seemed to be turning her head, and to have by anticipation dispersed even those pretty little moods of dignity and of languid silence with which she had formerly varied the monotony of her childish gaiety. Her very greeting was sufficiently suggestive of her views of the impending ceremony. “You see I’m all in white,” she began as she sprang down upon the pavement. “I thought you would like me to be dressed in white, so I made this dress myself last night, and sat up so late making the cap--for I made it all myself, fancy that!--that I overslept myself this morning and was nearly late. What would you have done if I hadn’t come at all?” “I should have come and fetched you,” said George, as he shook hands with Mr. Angelo, and then drew the little bride’s hand through his arm to lead her into the church. “Isn’t this a queer wedding?” she chattered on as they went through the great outer door which the pew-opener had just thrown open, and by which she now stood curtseying. “I’ve been thinking how hard it seems that I should be married without any cake or any bridesmaids, and mamma not here, nor anybody I know. But I’m not going to cry, no, I’m not going to cry.” As they got inside the church she looked up from George’s arm to his face and saw that his eyes were moist. “Why, it’s you who are crying, and you are trembling too! What’s the matter?” she whispered anxiously.