The arrangement for the morrow was that Angela and her father were to take a fly to Roxham, where the registry office was, and whither George was also to be conveyed in a close carriage; that the ceremony was then to be gone through, after which the parties were to separate and return to their respective homes. Mr. Fraser had been asked to attend, but had excused himself from doing so.

In pursuance of this programme, Angela and her father left the Abbey House about ten o’clock and drove in silence to the town. Strange as it may seem, Angela had never been in a town before, and, in the curious condition of her mind, the new sight of busy streets interested her greatly, and served to divert her attention till they reached the door of the office. She alighted and was shown with Philip into a waiting-room. And here, for some unexplained reason, a great fear took hold of her, a terror of this ceremony which now loomed large and life-like before her.

“Father,” she said, suddenly, after a moment of irresolution, “I am going home. I will not go on with this business.”

“What can you mean, Angela?”

“I mean what I say. I never realized how dreadful it all was till now; it has come upon me like a revelation. Come, I am going.”

“Angela, don’t be a fool. You forget that George will be here in a minute, and that the settlements are all signed.”

“Then he can go back again and the settlements can be torn up. I will not go on with it.”

Philip was by this time almost beside himself with anxiety. After having thus with thought and toil, and by the aid of a blessed chance, lifted this delicious cup to his lips, was it to be dashed from him? Were the sweet dreams so near approaching to realization, in which he had been wrapped for so many days, all to be dissipated into thin air? Was he to lose the land after all, after he had fingered — oh! how lovingly — the yellow title-deeds? For, alas! the sale depended on the marriage. It could not be, neither fate nor Angela could be so cruel. He turned upon her with the boldness of despair.

“Angela, you must not go on like this, after having agreed to the thing of your own free will. Think of what it involves for me. If you refuse to marry him now at the last moment, I shall lose the Isleworth estates. Heavens, to think that so much property should be dependent upon the mere whim of a girl! Cannot you have a little consideration for others beside yourself? Do you really mean to sacrifice the hopes of my whole life, to throw away the only opportunity I can ever have of righting my wrongs, in order to gratify a sentimental whim? For God’s sake, think a little first before you sacrifice me. You promised to do it.”

Never before had Angela seen her father so strongly excited; he was positively shaking with agitation. She looked at him steadily, and with such contempt that, even in his excitement, he quailed before her.

“Very well, then, I will carry out my promise, dreadful as it is to me; but remember that it is only because you beg it, and that the responsibility of its consequences must always remain with you. Now, are you satisfied?— you will get your land.”

Philip’s dark face assumed a look of fervent gratitude, but before he had time to reply, a messenger came to say that “the gentleman” was waiting.

Her resolve once taken, Angela followed him with an untroubled face into the room where the registrar, a gentleman neatly dressed in black, was sitting at a sort of desk. Here the first thing her glance fell upon was the person of George Caresfoot. Although it was now the second week in June, he wore a respirator over his mouth and a scarf round his neck, and coughed very much. These were the first things she noticed. The next was that he was much thinner, so thin that the cheek-bones stood out from the level of his face, whilst the little blood-shot eyes seemed to protrude, giving to his general appearance, even with the mouth (his worst feature) hidden by the respirator, an unusually repulsive look. He was leaning on the arm of Lady Bellamy, who greeted Angela with a smile which the latter fancied had something of triumph in it.

With the exception of the messenger, who played the part of clerk in this civil ceremony, there was nobody else in the room. No greetings were interchanged, and in another moment Angela was standing, dressed in her funeral black, by George’s side before the registrar, and the ceremony had begun.

But from that moment, although her beautiful face preserved its composure, she scarcely saw or heard anything of what was going on. It was as though all the streams of thought in her brain had burst their banks and mingled in a great and turbulent current. She was filled with thought, but could seize upon no one idea, whilst within her mind she heard a sound as of the continuous whirring of broken machinery.

Objects and individuals, real and imagined, presented themselves before her mental vision, expanded till they filled the heavens with their bulk, and then shrank and shrank, and vanished into nothing. The word “wife” struck upon her ears, and seemed to go wailing away, “wife, wife, wife,” through all the illimitable halls of sound, till they were filled with echoes, and sound itself fell dead against the silence of the stars.

It was done. She awoke to find herself a married woman. Lady Bellamy stepped forward with the same half-triumphant smile with which she had greeted Angela hovering about her lips.

“Let me congratulate you, Mrs. Caresfoot,” she said; “indeed, I think I am privileged to do so, for, if I remember right, I was the first to prophesy this happy event;” and then, dropping her voice so that Angela alone could hear her, “Do you not remember that I told you that you would as certainly come to the altar rails within nine months with George Caresfoot as you would to your death-bed? I said that nine months ago today.”

Angela started as though she had been stung.

“Events have been too strong for me,” she murmured; “but all this is nothing but a form, a form that can now be forgotten.”

Again Lady Bellamy smiled as she answered,