The wedding day came and the excitement quieted down to the sudden hush of that solemn moment when the voice of a priest proclaims a man and a woman one. The ceremony was performed in the house, Lionel, after some qualms, having agreed to it. June stood beside her sister in the alcove of the bay-window and listened to the words which pledged her to a man of another country and to a life in a distant land. Rosamund was pale as she turned from the clergyman to greet the guests that pressed round her. It was a sacred moment to her, the giving of herself in its fullest and deepest significance to the man she loved, till death should part them. It was beyond doubt a very brilliant wedding. The house, hung with flowers--every blossom sent up from San Francisco wrapped in cotton wool--lost its bare, half-furnished look and became a bower. The costumes of the women--many imported from Paris--were in all cases costly and in some beautiful. The men, who squeezed past one another on the stairway and drank champagne in corners, stood for more wealth than the whole of the far West had known till the discovery of the Cresta Plata and the Big Bonanza. The millions that the arid state was pouring out in a silver stream were well represented in the Murchison mansion that afternoon. [Illustration: ROSAMUND] The breakfast seemed to June a never-ending procession of raised champagne glasses and toasts. She had a vision of the Colonel’s white head bent toward Rosamund over the low-bowled, thin-stemmed glass in which the golden bubbles rose, and of the husky note in his voice as he wished her joy. She saw her father, with reddened face and bloodshot eyes, rise to his feet, and with the southern fervency of phrase, which he had never lost, bid his daughter God-speed and farewell, the glass shaking in his hand. Harrower stood up beside his bride, her listening face fair and spiritual between the drooping folds of her veil, and said a few words of thanks, halting and simple, but a man’s words nevertheless. Then the time came for the bride to go up stairs for the change of dress. The guests made a path for her, and June followed the tall figure with its long, glimmering train. They said little as Rosamund took off her wedding finery and donned her traveling dress. But at the door of the room they clasped each other in a dumb embrace, neither daring to speak. As she descended Rosamund drew her veil down to hide her tears. Her lips were quivering, her heart was rent with the pain of the parting. June came behind her, calm and dry-eyed, the bleak sense of depression that she had felt for weeks closing round her black and heavy. Part of herself--the strong, brave part--seemed to be torn away from her with the going of the sister, upon whom she had always leaned.