’Then you had better get your wife to bolt you in the closet for an hour or two, for you’ll chatter it yourself to the whole boiling parish if she don’t!  ‘Tis a poor womanly feller!’

‘You shouldn’t ha’ begun it, clerk.  I knew how ‘twould be,’ said the gardener soothingly, in a whisper to the clerk’s mangled remains.

The clerk turned and smiled at the fire, and warmed his other hand.

3.  NOON

The weather gave way.  In half-an-hour there began a rapid thaw.  By ten o’clock the roads, though still dangerous, were practicable to the extent of the half-mile required by the people of Knapwater Park.  One mass of heavy leaden cloud spread over the whole sky; the air began to feel damp and mild out of doors, though still cold and frosty within.

They reached the church and passed up the nave, the deep-coloured glass of the narrow windows rendering the gloom of the morning almost night itself inside the building.  Then the ceremony began.  The only warmth or spirit imported into it came from the bridegroom, who retained a vigorous—­even Spenserian—­bridal-mood throughout the morning.

Cytherea was as firm as he at this critical moment, but as cold as the air surrounding her.  The few persons forming the wedding-party were constrained in movement and tone, and from the nave of the church came occasional coughs, emitted by those who, in spite of the weather, had assembled to see the termination of Cytherea’s existence as a single woman.  Many poor people loved her.  They pitied her success, why, they could not tell, except that it was because she seemed to stand more like a statue than Cytherea Graye.

Yet she was prettily and carefully dressed; a strange contradiction in a man’s idea of things—­a saddening, perplexing contradiction.  Are there any points in which a difference of sex amounts to a difference of nature?  Then this is surely one.  Not so much, as it is commonly put, in regard to the amount of consideration given, but in the conception of the thing considered.  A man emasculated by coxcombry may spend more time upon the arrangement of his clothes than any woman, but even then there is no fetichism in his idea of them—­they are still only a covering he uses for a time.  But here was Cytherea, in the bottom of her heart almost indifferent to life, yet possessing an instinct with which her heart had nothing to do, the instinct to be particularly regardful of those sorry trifles, her robe, her flowers, her veil, and her gloves.

The irrevocable words were soon spoken—­the indelible writing soon written—­and they came out of the vestry.  Candles had been necessary here to enable them to sign their names, and on their return to the church the light from the candles streamed from the small open door, and across the chancel to a black chestnut screen on the south side, dividing it from a small chapel or chantry, erected for the soul’s peace of some Aldclyffe of the past.  Through the open-work of this screen could now be seen illuminated, inside the chantry, the reclining figures of cross-legged knights, damp and green with age, and above them a huge classic monument, also inscribed to the Aldclyffe family, heavily sculptured in cadaverous marble.