A pale and most unhappy bride awaited her bridegroom in the boudoir at a few minutes to eight o'clock.

She felt perfectly lifeless, as though she had hardly enough will left even to act her part.

The white satin of her dress was not whiter than her face.

The head gardener had sent up some splendid gardenias for her to wear and the sight of them pained her, for were not these the flowers that Tristram had brought her that evening of her wedding day, not a fortnight ago, and that she had then thrown into the grate.

She pinned some in mechanically, and then let the maid clasp the diamonds round her throat and a band of them in her hair.