Five days went like a dream over Ellinor’s head. And when she woke up upon the sixth and saw the daylight grow upon the panelled wall of her room at the rectory, and knew it was the day that would see her David’s wife, she still felt as if she were in a dream. But it was a dream of great peace. All conflict, all violent emotion, all sense even of having to decide for herself, had gone from her. She was being guided and willingly went, without a single anxious thought for the future. As in a dream she allowed Madam Tutterville, who fluttered between smiles and tears, to robe her in her wedding garment. “Wear your grey gown,” David had once said to her. And so she was clothed this day in the colour he had liked. Dream-like still was the simple ceremony in Bindon’s mossy little church, where a very solemn and reverent rector gave their union the blessing of God from the depth of his fatherly heart. Coming down the aisle she noted with a vague smile what a monstrous white tie, what a cauliflower of a button-hole, adorned the figure of old Giles; how sheepishly some village notabilities were peeping at the new lady of Bindon as she paused to lay her wedding flowers on the stone that had but so lately been shifted for the laying to rest of Bindon’s sorcerer; how deeply these same good people curtsied—deepest those who had been most anxious to bring faggots for a witch’s pyre; how loud a cheer gave Joe Barnwall, whose pitchfork thrust had nearly ended all weal and woe for her but a month ago; with what strenuous childish importance the chubby hand that had flung stones at her, now helped to strew flowers before her bridal foot! Then a golden day at the rectory—long and yet strangely short. There was a wonderful wedding feast of four—which the rector vastly commended. They had the first pears from the rector’s pear-tree. And the rector and his lady quoted, after their special fashion, to their heart’s content. The rector gave a toast and made a little speech, with as much gusto, as felicitous a turn of phrase and as elegant a delivery as if he had been presiding at the most select gathering Oxford dignity could produce. At sunset, however, the moment fixed by herself for walking forth with her husband to her home, Ellinor suddenly awoke—awoke to the fact that she was married to her beloved, that she was his and he was hers, for ever; that they were starting on their new life together—and yet that there still was something between them! Her secret was still untold; that secret once so heavy, now so glad; that secret which once she had guarded with so anxious watch upon herself, which now the minutes were all too slow till she could set it free!