o me after now," sobbed Page, and as she
spoke the Gretry girl, hypnotised with emotion and taken all unawares,
gave vent to a shrill hiccough, a veritable yelp, that woke an
explosive echo in every corner of the building.

Page could not restrain a giggle, and the giggle strangled with the
sobs in her throat, so that the little girl was not far from hysterics.

And just then a sonorous voice, magnificent, orotund, began suddenly
from the chancel with the words:

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and
in the face of this company to join together this Man and this Woman in
holy matrimony."

Promptly a spirit of reverence, not to say solemnity, pervaded the
entire surroundings. The building no longer appeared secular,
unecclesiastical. Not in the midst of all the pomp and ceremonial of
the Easter service had the chancel and high altar disengaged a more
compelling influence. All other intrusive noises died away; the organ
was hushed; the fussy janitor was nowhere in sight; the outside clamour
of the city seemed dwindling to the faintest, most distant vibration;
the whole world was suddenly removed, while the great moment in the
lives of the Man and the Woman began.

Page held her breath; the intensity of the situation seemed to her,
almost physically, straining tighter and tighter with every passing
instant. She was awed, stricken; and Laura appeared to her to be all at
once a woman transfigured, semi-angelic, unknowable, exalted. The
solemnity of those prolonged, canorous syllables: "I require and charge
you both, as ye shall answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the
secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed," weighed down upon her
spirits with an almost intolerable majesty. Oh, it was all very well to
speak lightly of marriage, to consider it in a vein of mirth. It was a
pretty solemn affair, after all; and she herself, Page Dearborn, was a
wicked, wicked girl, full of sins, full of deceits and frivolities,
meriting of punishment--on "that dreadful day of judgment." Only last
week she had deceived Aunt Wess' in the matter of one of her "young
men." It was time she stopped. To-day would mark a change.
Henceforward, she resolved, she would lead a new life.

"God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost ..."

To Page's mind the venerable bishop's voice was filling all the church,
as on the day of Pentecost, when the apostles received the Holy Ghost,
the building was fill