Even the preacher, infected by the atmosphere of haste, ran over the sentences, hardly waiting for the responses.

Adelaide's mother was hearing the trunks going down to the van, and was impatient to be where she could superintend--there was a very important small trunk, full of underclothes, which she was sure they were overlooking.

Arthur was gloomily abstracted, was in fierce combat with the bitter and melancholy thoughts which arose from the contrast he could not but make--this simple wedding, with Dory Hargrave as her groom, when in other circumstances there would have been such pomp and grandeur.

He and Mary the cook and Ellen the upstairs girl and old Miss Skeffington, generalissimo of the Hargrave household, were the only persons present keenly conscious that there was in progress a wedding, a supposedly irrevocable union of a man and woman for life and for death and for posterity.

Even old Dr.Hargrave was thinking of what Dory was to do on the other side, was mentally going over the elaborate scheme for his son's guidance which he had drawn up and committed to paper.