Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/145

Rh letters; and the three-quarters gallery was primly-railed, the pulpit austere, and the attitude of the pews eternally stiff and uncompromising.

But tonight, little tongues of flame from many jets softened the rigidity, giving the old oak and walnut the suggestion of polished mahogany; and festoons of purple aster and goldenrod added a royal emblazoning. Altogether it should have been a most charming scene, but somehow it wasn't.

Suddenly turning to the right, just before she entered, she saw a figure, a woman's. She was perched on a gravestone of some old admiral or saint, looking in through the window at the assembled guests. The intermittent lightning flashed, turning the cerise dress into a dark crimson blur against the lowering sky. Beside her, also against the headstone, leaned another figure, somewhat taller. Dimly she made it out to be that of a man. Another flash forked across the sky, its reflection winking over the headstones, so crazily leaning that they seemed to stagger. She started—she must be "seeing things." That woman crouched like a dark blood smear against the grey of the graves—and that other face! Her practicality had always rejected stagy, sentimental fancies, but somehow tonight she couldn't conceive of it as anything but pallid, even sneering, like the Prince of Darkness.

She shuddered and rubbed her eyes, half thinking herself mad as that bride in the story she had read—of Lammermoor. But there they were—the two, apparently in the flesh— A jolly wedding with such guests!

But this wasn't like her; she simply must not give way to such fancies. She straightened herself and laughed aloud.