Chapter XCII: Three Weddings

A year had passed—more than a year—for violets were out on the river banks, and lilac flowers were budding around that New England farm-house in which Bertha Canfield was to be married.

There was no pomp or hilarity in this wedding. Those kind-hearted old Quakers looked upon this as a species of dissipation which required at least some frosted cake and a bottle or two of old currant wine, which no one in that party was cruel enough to refuse because it did not promise to be as palatable as it was antique.

The good old lady had thought it best to indulge in a new dress of dove-colored satin, gored to her heart’s content, which had a soft shimmer on it like the sunlight shaken from the plumage of a dove when it flies, which she did not think out of place, considering it was the wedding of her only grandchild—one of the sweetest, brightest, and best girls that ever lived.

In this quiet fashion this young couple entered the little Episcopal Church for which the old people had great tolerance, remembering the God-fearing and most noble man who had given his honored name to their granddaughter; and in the holy quiet of that sacred edifice, within sight of her poor mother’s grave, Bertha Canfield became Egbert Fletcher’s wife.

On the same day and almost at the same hour, Edward Lane and Clara Anderson stood within the shadows of the meeting-house her grandmother had worshipped in so many years. The minister who performed the ceremony was the man who had defended her so gently from the assaults of his congregation; and Judge Lane stood near the altar, giving the bride away with a smiling and happy countenance.

Among the first to congratulate the bride when she turned from the altar were Deacon Jones and his wife. Among the last were Ben Vose and his mother, who lingered about the meeting-house door till she came forth, and went home smiling, because she had put back her veil to smile on them.

Judge Lane and Mrs. Wilson Forbes did the honors of the great house that evening to as large a crowd as ever was seen under its roof. After that, Clara became mistress of the mansion, and her husband became the acting partner in the law-office of Lane & Lane.

Another wedding was about this time going forward in old Virginia.

The young widow at Willow Bend had just come out of her double mourning. The bright hair was released from the crimped snow of her widow’s cap, and crowned with white roses. The pall-like, double veil of English crape, with which grief for her father’s death had enveloped her, was cast aside, and in its place a magnificent cloud of Brussels point trailed its frost-work down to the very edge of her sweeping train.

Around her was a crowd of friends, who had come to let the sunshine into that old mansion, and turn it from a house of mourning to the brightest and gayest of festive halls.

By her side, holding her hand in his, was a young man, who lifted that sumptuous bridal veil, and kissed the smiling lips beneath, whispering, in a voice that had more triumph than tenderness in it:

“At last you are all mine, Mrs. Hyde!”

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.