yes, the pride of his
manner, as though he would place her before the whole world, and defy it
to produce one so graceful or so fair. Lady Peters' face softened and
her heart beat as she walked up to the altar with them. This was true
love.

So the grand old words of the marriage-service were pronounced--they
were promised to each other for better for worse, for weal for
woe--never to part until death parted them--to be each the other's
world.

It was the very morning for a bride. Heaven and earth smiled their
brightest, the sunshine was golden, the autumn flowers bloomed fair, the
autumn foliage had assumed its rich hues of crimson and of burnished
gold; there was a bright light over the sea and the hill-tops.

Only one little _contretemps_ happened at the wedding. Madaline smiled
at it. Lord Arleigh was too happy even to notice it, but Lady Peters
grew pale at the occurrence; for, according to her old-fashioned ideas,
it augured ill.

Just as Lord Arleigh was putting the ring on the finger of his fair
young bride, it slipped and fell to the ground. The church was an
old-fashioned one, and there were graves and vaults all down the aisle.
Away rolled the little golden ring, and when Lord Arleigh stooped down
he could not see it. He was for some minutes searching for it, and then
he found it--it had rolled into the hollow of a large letter on one of
the level grave-stones.

Involuntarily he kissed it as he lifted it from the ground; it was too
cruel for anything belonging to that fair young bride to have been
brought into contact with death. Lady Peters noted the little incident
with a shudder, Madaline merely smiled. Then the ceremony was over--Lord
Arleigh and Madaline were man and wife. It seemed to him that the whole
world around him was transformed.

They walked out of the church together, and when they stood in the
sunlight he turned to her.

"My darling, my wife," he said, in an impassioned voice, "may Heaven
send to us a life bright as this sunshine, love as pure--life and death
together! I pray Heaven that no deeper cloud may come over our lives
than there is now in the sky above us."

These words were spoken at only eleven in the morning. If he had known
all that he would have to suffer before eleven at night, Lord Arleigh,
with all his bravery, all his chivalry, would have been ready to fling
himself from the green hill-top into the shimmering sea.

Chapter XXIV.

It was the custom of t