But a few short moments since, and how proud and happy had she been advancing up the aisle! The children were gone from the churchyard; their flowers cast away, not in the pathway of the bride, but on the graves. In their haste, they had trod upon the scarlet cloth laid down, and discoloured and stained it. The ringers had deserted the bell-ropes, the village street was empty and silent—only the unconscious flag waved upon the tower, and the arch stood for them to pass beneath, with its motto—now a bitter mockery—“Joy be with you!” The carriage rolled along the road, and as they approached The Place, Merton began to recover his professional calm; and the return of his mind to a more normal state was marked by doubt—Was it true? But no sooner had they entered the garden than he saw it was. The faces of the knots of men, their low, hushed voices, all told but one tale—death had been there! They tried to get Violet to go upstairs to her own room, but she would not. “I must see him!” was her cry. “I must see him!” She pushed through them. All gave way before her. Not _there_, surely? Yes, there—in the very room where the wedding-breakfast was laid out, where the cake stood upon the table, and the champagne-bottles at the side; there, in the place of joy, was the dead—dead in his armchair, close to the window, with a ghastly wound upon the once-peaceful brow! She threw up her hands—she uttered a great cry. Those that heard it say it rings even now in their ears. She threw herself upon him. The crimson blood dyed her veil, as it hung loose and torn, and tinged the innocent pearls around her neck with its terrible hue. She fainted the second time, and would have fallen, but Aymer caught her; and they bore her upstairs, unconscious even of her misery. The Place was silent. The guns were not fired, the bells were stilled. Men moved with careful footsteps, women hushed their voices, and in the stillness they heard the church clock slowly striking the hour of noon. At that moment she should have been returning, radiant and blissful in triumph, to meet the welcome from her father’s lips. There was one that could not understand it—one dumb beast that could not be driven away. It was Dando, the mastiff dog. Strangely enough, he avoided the chamber of the dead, and crouched at the door of Violet’s room. When Merton saw it he said, “Let the dog go in; maybe, he will relieve her a little.” But Violet, lying on a couch, conscious now and tearless, despairing in the darkened room, motioned him away. “Take him away,” she said. “If he had been faithful, he would have watched and guarded.” It was a natural thought, but it was not just. Poor Dando, like the rest, had gone to the church with the crowd; and just at the moment when he was most wanted, then he was absent from his duty.