“Oh, fie, Doctor,” replied the Ensign; “I did not imagine that so grave a personage as you are could be fond of anything wild.”

“Oh, yes,” replied the Doctor, “ever while you live prefer the wild to the tame; every one, sir,” he added, taking the other by the button, “that knows what’s what, in that respect, does it.  Well, but about the tribulations.”

As usual the Doctor was doomed to be left in them, for just as he spoke the doors were thrown more widely open, and Lucy, leaning upon, or rather supported by, her aunt and Lady Emily, accompanied by Mrs. Mainwaring, entered the room.  Her father had been in close conversation with Dunroe; but not all his efforts at self-possession and calmness could prevent his agitation and anxiety from being visible.  His eye was unsettled and blood-shot; his manner uneasy, and the whole bearing indicative of hope, ecstasy, apprehension, and doubt, all flitting across each other like clouds in a sky troubled by adverse currents, but each and all telling a tale of the tumult which was going on within him.

Yes, Lucy was there, but, alas the day! what a woful sight did she present to the spectators.  The moment she had come down, the servants, and all those who had obtained permission to be present at the ceremony, now entered the large drawing-room to witness it.  Tom Gourlay entered a little after his sister, followed in a few minutes by old Anthony, accompanied by Fenton, who leant upon him, and was provided with an arm-chair in a remote corner of the room.  After them came Thomas Corbet and his sister, Ginty Cooper, together with old Sam Roberts, and the man named Skipton, with whom the reader has already been made acquainted.

But how shall we describe the bride—­the wretched, heart-broken victim of an ambition that was as senseless as it was inhuman?  It was impossible for one moment to glance at her without perceiving that the stamp of death, misery, and despair, was upon her; and yet, despite of all this, she carried with her and around her a strange charm, an atmosphere of grace, elegance, and beauty, of majestic virtue, of innate greatness of mind, of wonderful truth, and such transparent purity of heart and thought, that when she entered the room all the noise and chat and laughter were instantly hushed, and a sense of solemn awe, as if there were more than a marriage here, came over all present.  Nay, more.  We shall not pretend to trace the cause and origin of this extraordinary sensation.  Originate as it may, it told a powerful and startling tale to her father’s heart; but in truth she had not been half a minute in the room when, such was the dignified but silent majesty of her sorrow, that there were few eyes there that were not moist with tears.  The melancholy impressiveness of her character, her gentleness, her mournful resignation, the patience with which she suffered, could not for one moment be misunderstood, and the contagion of sympathy, and of common humanity, in the fate of a creature apparently more divine than human, whose sorrow was read as if by intuition, spread through them with a feeling of strong compassion that melted almost every I heart, and sent the tears to every eye.