But by what perversity of
taste had the artist represented his principal figure as so wrinkled
and decayed, while yet he had decked her out in the brightest splendor
of attire, as if the loveliest maiden had suddenly withered into
age, and become a moral to the beautiful around her! On they went,
however, and had glittered along about a third of the aisle, when
another stroke of the bell seemed to fill the church with a visible
gloom, dimming and obscuring the bright pageant, till it shone forth
again as from a mist.
This time the party wavered, stopped, and huddled closer
together, while a slight scream was heard from some of the ladies, and
a confused whispering among the gentlemen. Thus tossing to and fro,
they might have been fancifully compared to a splendid bunch of
flowers, suddenly shaken by a puff of wind, which threatened to
scatter the leaves of an old, brown, withered rose, on the same
stalk with two dewy buds- such being the emblem of the widow between
her fair young bridemaids. But her heroism was admirable. She had
started with an irrepressible shudder, as if the stroke of the bell
had fallen directly on her heart; then, recovering herself, while
her attendants were yet in dismay, she took the lead, and paced calmly
up the aisle.
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