“I do not think there is much to say,” answered the old clergyman, turning his head aside, “save that if it should please you to come to the church in ten minutes’ time you will find a candle on the altar, and a priest within the rails, and a clerk to hold the book. More we cannot do at such short notice.” Then he paused for a while, and, hearing no dissent, walked down the hall and out of the door. Emlyn took Cicely by the hand, led her to a room that was shown to them, and there made her ready for her bridal as best she might. She had no fine dress in which to clothe her, nor, indeed, would there have been time to don it. But she combed out her beautiful brown hair, and, opening that box of Eastern jewels which were the great pride of the Foterells--being the rarest and the most ancient in all the countryside--she decked her with them. On her broad brow she set a circlet from which hung sparkling diamonds that had been brought, the story said, by her mother’s ancestor, a Carfax, from the Holy Land, where once they were the peculiar treasure of a paynim queen, and upon her bosom a necklet of large pearls. Brooches and rings also she found for her breast and fingers, and for her waist a jewelled girdle with a golden clasp, while to her ears she hung the finest gems of all--two great pearls pink like the hawthorn-bloom when it begins to turn. Lastly she flung over her head a veil of lace most curiously wrought, and stood back with pride to look at her. Now Cicely, who all this while had been silent and unresisting, spoke for the first time, saying-- “How came this here, Nurse?” “Your mother wore it at her bridal, and her mother too, so I have been told. Also once before I wrapped it about you--when you were christened, sweet.” “Mayhap; but how came it here?” “In the bosom of my robe. Not knowing when we should get home again, I brought it, thinking that perhaps one day you might marry, when it would be useful. And now, strangely enough, the marriage has come.” “Emlyn, Emlyn, I believe that you planned all this business, whereof God alone knows the end.” “That is why He makes a beginning, dear, that His end may be fulfilled in due season.” “Aye, but what is that end? Mayhap this is my shroud you wrap about me. In truth, I feel as though death were near.”