thralled me, I fixed my
gaze upon the bride.

"She was looking beautiful; more beautiful than any one had seen her
look for weeks. A bright color suffused her delicate cheeks, and in her
eyes burned a strange excitement, which did the work of happiness in
lighting up her face. But it was a transient glow which faded
imperceptibly but surely, as the ceremony proceeded, and passed
completely away as the last inexorable words were uttered which made her
the wife of the false being at her side.

"He, on the contrary, was pale up to that same critical moment--very
pale, when one remembers his naturally florid complexion; but as her
color went, his rose, and when the minister withdrew, and friends began
to crowd around them, he grew so jovial and so noisy that more than one
person glanced at him with suspicion, and cast pitying looks at the now
quiet and immobile young wife.

"Meantime I sought with eager anxiety to catch one more glimpse of
Marah. But she had shrunk from sight, and was not to be found. And the
gayety ran high and the wine was poured freely, and the bridegroom
drank with ever-increasing excitement, toasting his bride, but never
looking at her, though her eyes turned more than once upon him with an
appeal that affected painfully more than one person in the crowd. At
last she rose, and, at this signal, he put down his glass, and, with a
low bow to the company, prepared to follow her from the room. They
passed close to the place where I stood, and I caught one glance from
his eyes. It was a laughing one, but there was uneasiness in it. There
might have been something more, but I had not time to search for it, for
at that moment I felt her dress brush against my sleeve, and turned to
give her the smile which I knew her friendly heart demanded.

"'You will wait till we go?' fell in a whisper from her lips; and I
nodded with another smile, and they went on and I stood where they had
left me, in one of those moods which made me, as far as all human
intercourse is concerned, as much of an isolated being as I am in these
mountains. I did not wake again from this abstraction till that same
premonitory feeling, of which I have so often spoken, told me that
something in which I was deeply interested was about to happen. Looking
up, I found myself in the room alone. During the hour of my abstraction
the guests had gone out, and I had neither noticed their departure nor
the gradual cessation of the noise which at one t