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HE church was not a large one, and the decorously expectant wedding-guests filled it comfortably. A soprano voice had sung nobly from a gallery, long white ribbons had been drawn, and now the organ palpitated profoundly into every ear a majestic vamping. Through a door just opened at the left of the altar, the clergyman in his gown could be seen, and, behind him, the bridegroom and his supporting comrade, composing themselves for the imminent confrontation and erasing from their countenances every token of either emotion or intelligence. All that they allowed to remain visible was accurate tailoring accompanied by the pallor of stage-fright.

The organ developed the heralding signal of the great nuptial approach; the air of the interior trembled to those bars of music so familiar that they seem to invest their composer, not in his chosen solemn mantle, but in the mocking garb of a come-