The
desolating tempest had swept by; and so brilliant was the sunshine,
and so clear the bending azure, that night and storms were both
forgotten.
Old Mr. Allison was one of the few guests, outside of the families,
who were present at the nuptial ceremonies. The bride--in years, if
not in heart-experience, yet too young to enter upon the high duties
to which she had solemnly pledged herself--looked the embodied image
of purity and loveliness.
"Let me congratulate you," said the old man, sitting down beside Mr.
Markland, and grasping his hand, after the beautiful and impressive
ceremony was over and the husband's lips had touched the lips of his
bride and wife. "And mine is no ordinary congratulation, that goes
scarcely deeper than words, for I see in this marriage the beginning
of a true marriage; and in these external bonds, the image of those
truer spiritual bonds which are to unite them in eternal oneness."
"What an escape she made!" responded the father, a shudder running
through his frame, as there arose before him, at that instant, a
clear recollection of the past, and of his own strange, consenting
blindness.
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