onishing part of the charming spectacle. The gaping throng
with startled faces stood and stared. Above the huddled little bride
stood the bridegroom, tall and dark and frowning, an angry red surging
through his handsome face. The white-haired minister, with two red spots
on his fine scholarly cheeks, stood grave with troubled dignity, as
though somehow he meant to hold the little still bride responsible for
this unseemly break in his beautiful service. The organ died away with
a soft crash of the keys and pedals as if they too leaped up to see; the
scent of the lilies swept sickeningly up in a great wave on the top of
the silence.

In a moment all was confusion. The minister stooped, the best man sprang
into the aisle and lifted the flower-like head. Some one produced a fan,
and one of the ushers hurried for a glass of water. A physician
struggled from his pew across the sittings of three stout dowagers, and
knelt, with practiced finger on the little fluttering pulse. The bride's
stepmother roused to solicitous and anxious attention. The organ came
smartly up again in a hopeless tangle of chords and modulations, trying
to get its poise once more. People climbed upon their seats to see, or
crowded out in the aisle curiously and unwisely kind, and in the way.
Then the minister asked the congregation to be seated; and amid the
rustle of wedding finery into seats suddenly grown too narrow and too
low, the ushers gathered up the little inert bride and carried her
behind the palms across a hall and into the vestry room. The stepmother
and a group of friends hurried after, and the minister requested the
people to remain quietly seated for a few minutes. The organ by this
time had recovered its poise and was playing soft tender melodies, but
the excited audience was not listening:

"I thought she looked ghastly when she came in," declared the mother of
three frowsy daughters. "It's strange she didn't put on some rouge."

"Um-mm! What a pity! I suppose she isn't strong! What did her own mother
die of?" murmured another speculatively, preparing to put forth a theory
before any one else got ahead of her.

"Oh! The poor child!" sympathized a romantic friend. "They've been
letting her do too much! Didn't they make a handsome couple? I'm crazy
to see them come marching down the aisle. They surely wouldn't put off
the wedding just for a faint, would they?"

And all over the church some woman began to tell how her sister's child,