e would fairly hang and quarter me,
if my news broke off that there wedden at a last minute like this.'

'Then you had better get your wife to bolt you in the closet for an hour
or two, for you'll chatter it yourself to the whole boiling parish if
she don't! 'Tis a poor womanly feller!'

'You shouldn't ha' begun it, clerk. I knew how 'twould be,' said the
gardener soothingly, in a whisper to the clerk's mangled remains.

The clerk turned and smiled at the fire, and warmed his other hand.

3. NOON

The weather gave way. In half-an-hour there began a rapid thaw. By
ten o'clock the roads, though still dangerous, were practicable to the
extent of the half-mile required by the people of Knapwater Park. One
mass of heavy leaden cloud spread over the whole sky; the air began to
feel damp and mild out of doors, though still cold and frosty within.

They reached the church and passed up the nave, the deep-coloured glass
of the narrow windows rendering the gloom of the morning almost night
itself inside the building. Then the ceremony began. The only warmth
or spirit imported into it came from the bridegroom, who retained a
vigorous--even Spenserian--bridal-mood throughout the morning.

Cytherea was as firm as he at this critical moment, but as cold as the
air surrounding her. The few persons forming the wedding-party were
constrained in movement and tone, and from the nave of the church came
occasional coughs, emitted by those who, in spite of the weather, had
assembled to see the termination of Cytherea's existence as a single
woman. Many poor people loved her. They pitied her success, why, they
could not tell, except that it was because she seemed to stand more like
a statue than Cytherea Graye.

Yet she was prettily and carefully dressed; a strange contradiction in
a man's idea of things--a saddening, perplexing contradiction. Are
there any points in which a difference of sex amounts to a difference of
nature? Then this is surely one. Not so much, as it is commonly put, in
regard to the amount of consideration given, but in the conception of
the thing considered. A man emasculated by coxcombry may spend more time
upon the arrangement of his clothes than any woman, but even then there
is no fetichism in his idea of them--they are still only a covering
he uses for a time. But here was Cytherea, in the bottom of her heart
almost indifferent to life, yet possessing an instinct with which her
heart had nothing to do, the i