“Nonsense,” cried the Colonel with an authority that few contested.  “Proceed at once.”

“I cannot,” repeated the minister, and his quiet voice had in it the firmness, almost obstinacy, that often characterizes gentle people.  His opposition had seemed so disproportioned and was so gently uttered that the hearers had felt as if a breath must blow it away, and interest heightened to intense excitement when it proved invincible.

“What is all this?” demanded Stephen, holding Katie’s arm still more firmly in his own and facing Mr. Shurtleff with eyes of indignant protest.  As he received no immediate answer, he turned to Elizabeth.  “Mistress Royal,” he said, “can you explain this unseemly interruption?”

Then all the company, who for the moment had forgotten her share in the transaction, turned their eyes upon her again.

“That wicked jest that we had all forgotten,” she said, looking at him an instant with a wildness of pain in her eyes.  Then she turned to Katie’s fair, pale face full of wonder and distress at the unguessed obstacle, and with a smothered cry dropped her face in her hands, and stood motionless and unheeded in the greater excitement.  For now Mr. Shurtleff had begun to speak.

“You ask me,” he said, “why I do not perform the ceremony and marry these two young people whose hearts love has united.  I do not dare to do it until I understand the meaning of this strange paper I hold in my hand.  What do you remember,” he said to Stephen, “of a singular game of a wedding ceremony played one evening last summer?”

The young man looked uncomprehending for a moment, then drew his breath sharply.

“That?” he said, “Why, that was only to give an example of something we were talking about; that was nothing.  Mistress,”—­he stopped and glanced at Elizabeth who, leaning forward, was hanging upon every word of his denial as if it were music—­“Mistress Royal knows that was so.”

“Yes,” cried Elizabeth, “indeed I do.”

“Nevertheless,” returned Mr. Shurtleff, “it may have been a jest to be eternally remembered, as all light-minded treatment of serious matters must be.  I hope with all my heart that a moment’s frivolity will not have life-long consequences of sorrow, but I cannot proceed in this happy ceremony that I have been called here to perform until the point is settled beyond dispute.”

“See how habit rules him like a second nature,” whispered Colonel Pepperrell aside to the Governor.  “Nobody but a minister would stop to give a homily with those poor creatures before him in an agony of suspense.”

“My dear,” said his wife softly in a tone of reproof, laying her hand warningly on his arm.

“Stephen Archdale isn’t the man to stand this,” retorted the Governor in a higher key than he realized.  But the words did not reach their object, for he had already laid hold of the paper in Mr. Shurtleffs hand.

“If this paper explains your conduct, give it to me,” he said haughtily.