The marriage day came, and the chimes were ringing merrily in the old square tower of the little vicarage church, scaring the swallows from their nests amid the leaves and the clustering ivy, and, aware of the event, numbers of the parishioners and of Colonel Daubeny's tenantry, in their holiday attire, were toiling up the steep and picturesque pathway that led through shady dingles to the quaint edifice which overlooked the Cray. The humble old-fashioned organ gave forth its most joyous notes; and what was wanting in splendour or decoration in a church so old and rural, was amply made up by the masses of flowers, many of them the rarest exotics from the conservatories of Colonel Daubeny, and these garlanded the round chancel arch and the short dumpy Saxon pillars, while the altar in its deep recess was gay with them; when Laura, leaning on the arm of her father, the old thin-faced and silver-haired Vicar, and followed by her six bridesmaids, all lovely little girls, relatives of both families, dressed alike, and attended closely, too, by her two brothers, the thoughtless lads, whom she had sacrificed herself to serve and advance in life, was led slowly up the church, the cynosure and admiration of every eye, for all the people knew and loved her. The gift of the bridegroom--a handsome, grave, and manly-looking fellow, whose hair, though only in his fortieth year, Indian service had slightly streaked with grey, and whose best man was his old chum and comrade, Charlie Fane--her bridal dress, priceless with satin and lace, shone in the successive rays of sunlight as she passed the painted windows, her bridal veil floated gracefully and gloriously around her, by its folds hiding the ashy pallor of her charming face, and her eyes that were aflame with unshed tears, and trembled to look up, lest they should encounter those of Jack Westbrook, full of upbraiding and bitterness; but Jack was at that moment miles away occupying his mind with very different matters, though he well knew what was then being enacted at Craybourne Church. She stood and knelt as one in a dream side by side with Philip Daubeny at the altar rail before her father, and it certainly _did_ strike the former with something of alarm rather than surprise, that when she was ungloved by a fussy and blushing little bridesmaid, and when she placed her hand steadily and without a tremor in his, it was icy and cold, as that of Lucy Ashton on her ill-omened bridal morn.