diamonds in her
delicately moulded, but alert and generous ears. Her fine gold
watch-chain, twice dependent from her neck, disappeared in the snowy
mould of her bosom, on whose heaving drift swam a magnolia-bud and
blossom, each with a leaf. Her father's picture, in a careful miniature
set in pearls, lay higher on her breast, fastened by a pearl necklace.
Her hands were covered with white gloves, and her arms were without
ornament. Her hair, dropping in dark ringlets around her forehead and
temples, was combed upward farther back, and then gathered around a
pearl comb in high braids, and the plentiful loops drooped to her
shoulder.

Milburn glanced at the treasures of her peerless bodily charms, never
till now revealed to his sight, and their splendor almost made him
afraid.

Never had he been at a theatre, a ball, or anywhere from which he could
have foreseen a swan-like neck and bosom sculptured like these, and arms
as white as the limbs of the silver-maple, and warmed with bridal-life
and modesty.

Her lips, parted and red, her great rich eyes a goddess might have
commanded through, with their eyebrows of raven-black, like entrances to
the caves of the Cumaean sibyl, her small head borne as easily upon her
neck as a dove upon a sprig--all flashed upon Milburn's thrilled yet
flinching soul, as the revelation of a divinity.

As she stepped forward he spoke to her with that bold instinct or
ecstasy she had observed when she first addressed him in her father's
house, ten hours before.

"You have dressed yourself for me?" he said.

"Sir, such as I could command upon this necessity I thought to do you
honor with."

"For _me_, to look so beautiful! what can I say? You are very lovely!"

"It is gracious of you to praise me. Shall we wait, or are you ready?"

He gave her his hand, unable to speak again, and she was calm enough to
notice that his hand was now hot, as if he had fever. Her father, at her
side, reached out also, and took the bridegroom's other hand:

"Milburn," he said, huskily, "this is no work of mine. My daughter has
my consent only because it is her will."

"The nobler to me for that," Milburn spoke, with his countenance
strangely flushed. "What shall we do, my lady?"

"Give me your arm; not that one. This is right. Have you brought a ring,
sir?"

"Yes." He drew from his vest pocket a little, lean gold ring, worth
hardly half a dollar.

"It was my poor mother's," he said.

Without anothe