"Are you in great pain?" "Yes; a bad business, I think. Will you oblige me by seeing that my horse is led to the stable in ---- Street?" The shutter was soon brought. "Thank you. Lift me very gently." As they moved him he clinched his teeth again in silent torture. "All right. Now one take the shutter at the head, and one at the feet. You'll find me a light weight." And thus, between two men, escorted by a procession of schoolboys just let loose, Vinal was carried to the hotel. The event justified his presage. He was forced to lie motionless for weeks, suffering greatly from bodily pain, and no less from certain anxieties which of late had harassed him. Leslie, on his part, was in great distress at the disaster. He felt, or fancied himself, near his end; and the wish next his heart was to see the marriage accomplished before he died. It was therefore determined that, notwithstanding the inauspicious plight of the bridegroom, it should take place at the time before fixed upon, four months after the beginning of the engagement. The ceremony was very private. None were present but two or three friends of Miss Leslie, the dying father, borne thither in a chair, the disabled bridegroom, and the pale and agitated bride; for that morning, standing before Morton's picture, a strange misgiving and a dark foreboding had fallen upon her, and the sun never shone on a bride more wretched. Her nearest friend, Mrs. Ashland, was at her side. She was the only person, besides her father and Vinal, who knew of her engagement to Morton, and, indeed, had been her confidante from first to last. Soon after Morton's disappearance, an accident had brought them together, reviving an old school intimacy; and Edith Leslie, in her suspense and misery, was but too glad to find a friend in whom she could trust without reserve. The rite was ended, and Edith Leslie was Edith Vinal. Days and weeks passed; Leslie slowly declined, and Vinal slowly recovered. She divided her time between them, passing the greater part of the day with the latter, and returning at evening to watch by her father's bed or rest within sound of his voice. At length, three weeks after her marriage, on a morning the horror of which remained scarred always in her memory, Morton's letter from Genoa was put into her hands; and the long-disciplined patience with which she had armed herself, the religion which she had called to her aid, all the guards and defences of her mind, were borne down, for a time, by the resistless flood of passion, which, like a river bursting its barriers, swept all before it. CHAPTER LV. We twain have met like ships upon the sea, Who hold an hour's converse, * * * One little hour! and then away they speed On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam, To meet no more.--_Alexander Smith_. "Good morning, Ned," said Morton to his friend Meredith. He had come to Boston the day before, and had already seen Meredith more than once.