The coach of the day was an ark in capacity, and woman’s dress as sheathlike as a candle flame.  Jacqueline, Unity, Deb, Cousin Jane Selden, and a burly genial gentleman of wide family connections and Republican tenets travelled to church in the same vehicle and were not crowded.  The coach was Cousin Jane Selden’s; the gentleman was of some remote kinship, and had been Henry Churchill’s schoolmate, and he was going to give Jacqueline away.  He talked to Cousin Jane Selden about the possibilities of olive culture, and he showed Deb a golden turnip of a watch with jingling seals.  Jacqueline and Unity sat in silence, Jacqueline’s arm around Deb.  Behind their coach came the small party gathered at Mrs. Selden’s.  The church was three miles down the road.  It was now afternoon, and the heat lay like a veil upon wood and field and the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge.  The dust rose behind the carriage, then sank upon and further whitened the milkweed and the love vine and the papaw bushes.  The blaze of light, the incessant shrilling of the locusts, the shadeless pines, the drouth, the long, dusty road—­all made, thought Unity, a dry and fierce monotony that seared the eyes and weighed upon the soul.  She wondered of what Jacqueline was thinking.

The Church of Saint Margaret looked forth with a small, white-pillared face, from a grove of oaks.  It had a flowery churchyard, and around it a white paling, keeping in the dead, and keeping out all roaming cattle.  There was a small cracked bell, and the swallows forever circled above the eaves and in and out of the belfry.  Without the yard, beneath the oaks, were a horserack and a shed for carriages.  To-day there were horses at the rack and tied beneath the trees; coaches, chaises, and curricles, not a few, beneath the shed and scattered through the oak grove.  The church within was all rustle and colour.  Saint Margaret’s had rarely seen such a gathering, or such a wholly amicable one, for to-day all the pews were of one party.  The wedding was one to draw the curious, the resolutely Republican, the kindred and friends of Jefferson,—­who, it was known, had sent the bride a valuable present and a long letter,—­the interested in Rand, the inimical, for party and other reasons, to the Churchills and the Carys.  The county knew that Miss Churchill might have had Greenwood.  The knowledge added piquancy to the already piquant fact that she had chosen the house on the Three-Notched Road.  Colonel Churchill and Major Edward, the county knew, would not come to the wedding; neither, of course, would the two Carys; neither, it appeared, would any other Federalist.  The rustling pews looked to all four corners and saw only folk of one watchword.  True, under the gallery was to be seen Mr. Pincornet, fadedly gorgeous in an old green velvet, but to this English stock Mr. Pincornet might give what word he chose; he remained a French dancing master.  The rustling pews nodded and smiled to each other, waiting to see Jacqueline Churchill come