Apparently Dr. Rane found nothing on his conscience that could present an impediment, and the preparation for the wedding went quietly on. Secretly might almost be the better word. In their dread lest the news should reach madam in her retreat over the water, and bring her back to thwart it, those concerned deemed it well to say nothing; and no suspicion of what was afloat transpired to the world in general.

Bessy--upon whom, from her isolated position, having no lady about her, the arrangements fell--was desired to fix a day. She named the twenty-ninth of June, her birthday. After July should come in, there was no certainty about madam\'s movements; she might come home, or she might not, and it was necessary that all should be over by that time, if it was to be gone through in peace. The details of the ceremony were to be of the simplest nature: Edmund North\'s recent death and the other attendant and peculiar circumstances forbidding the usual gaiety. The bridal party would go to church with as little ceremony as they went to service on Sundays, Bessy in a plain silk dress and a plain bonnet. Mr. North would give his daughter away, if he were well enough; if not, Richard. Ellen Adair was to be bridesmaid; Arthur Bohun had offered himself to Dr. Rane as best man. It might be very undutiful, but Arthur enjoyed stealing a march on madam as much as the best of them.

Mrs. Cumberland was no doubt satisfied with regard to the scruples she had raised, since she intended to countenance the wedding, and go to church. Dr. Rane and his bride would drive away from the church-door to the railway-station at Whitborough. The bridal tour was to last one week only. The doctor did not care to be longer away from his patients, and Bessy confessed that she would rather be at home, setting her house in order, than prolonging her stay at small inns in Wales. But for the disconcerting fact of madam\'s being in Paris, Dr. Rane would have liked to take Bessy across the Channel and give her her first glimpse of the French capital. Under madam\'s unjust rule, poor Bessy had never gone anywhere: Matilda North had been taken half over the world.

The new household arrangements at Dr. Rane\'s were to be accomplished during their week\'s absence: the articles of furniture--that Mr. North chose to consider belonged to Bessy--to be taken there from the Hall; the new carpet, Mrs. Cumberland\'s present, to be laid down in the drawing-room; Molly Green to enter as helpmate to Phillis. Surely madam would not grumble at that? Molly Green, going into a temper one day at some oppression of madam\'s, had given warning on the spot. Bessy liked the girl, and there could be no harm in engaging her as her own housemaid.

One of those taken into the secret had been Mrs. Gass. Richard, who greatly respected her in spite of her grammar, and liked her also, unfolded the news. She received it in silence: a very rare thing for Mrs. Gass to do. Just as it had struck Richard in regard to Mrs. Cumberland, so it struck him now--Mrs. Gass did not quite like the tidings.

"Well, I hope they\'ll be happy," she said at length, breaking the silence, "and I hope he deserves to be. I hope it with all my heart. Do you think he does, Mr. Richard?"

"Rane? Deserves to be happy? For all I see, he does. Why should he not?"

"I don\'t know," answered Mrs. Gass, looking into Richard\'s face. "Oliver Rane is my late husband\'s nephew, but he\'s three parts a stranger to me, except as a doctor; for he attends here, you know, sir,--as is natural--and not Alexander. Is he truthful, Mr. Richard? Is he trustworthy?"

"He is, for anything I know to the contrary," replied Richard North, a little wondering at the turn the conversation was taking. "If I thought he was not, I should be very sorry to give Bessy to him."

"Then let us hope that he is, Mr. Richard, and wish \'em joy with all our hearts."

That a doubt was lying on Mrs. Gass\'s mind, in regard to the scrap of paper found in her room, was certain. Being a sensible woman, it could only be that--when surrounding mists had cleared away--she should see that the only likely place for it to have dropped from, was Dr. Rane\'s pocketbook. Molly Green had been subjected to a cross-examination, very cleverly conducted, as Mrs. Gass thought, which left the matter exactly as it was before. But the girl\'s surprise was so genuine, at supposing any receipt for making plum-pudding (for thus had Mrs. Gass put it) could have been dropped by her, that Mrs. Gass\'s mind could only revert to the pocketbook. How far Oliver Rane was guilty, whether guilty at all, she was quite unable to decide. A doubt remained in her mind, though she was glad enough to put it from her. One thing struck her as curious, if not suspicious--that from the hour she had handed him over the paper to this, Dr. Rane had never once spoken of the subject to her. It almost seemed to Mrs. Gass that an innocent man would have done so, though it had only been to say, I have found no clue to the writer.

And if a little of the same doubt rose to Richard North during his interview with Mrs. Gass, it was due to her manner. But he was upright himself, unsuspicious as the day. The impression faded again; and he came away believing that Mrs. Gass, zealous for the Norths\' honours, rather disapproved of the marriage for Bessy, on account of the doctor\'s poverty.

And so, there was no one to give a word of warning where it might have been effectual, and the day fixed for the wedding drew on. After all, the programme was not strictly carried out, for Mr. North had one of his nervous attacks, and could not go to church.

At five minutes past nine o\'clock, in the warm bright June morning, the Dallory Hall carriage drove up to Dallory Church. Richard North, his sister, and Arthur Bohun were within it. The forms and etiquette usually observed at weddings were slighted here, else how came Arthur Bohun, the bridegroom\'s best man, to come to church with the bride? What did it matter? Closely in its wake came up the other carriage--which ought to have been the first. In after days, when a strange ending had come to the marriage life of Oliver Rane and his wife, and Oliver was regarded with dread, assailed with reproach, people said the marriage had been the Norths\' doings more than his. At any rate, Bessy was first at church, and both were a little late.

But Mr. North was not the only one who failed them; the other was Mrs. Cumberland. She assigned no reason for absenting herself from the ceremony, excepting a plea that she did not feel equal to it--which her son believed or not, as he pleased. Her new bright dress and bonnet were spread out on the bed; but she never as much as looked at them: and Ellen Adair found that she and Dr. Rane had to drive to church alone, in the hired carriage, arriving there almost simultaneously with the other party.

Richard North conducted his sister up the aisle, the bridegroom following close on their steps. Ellen Adair and Captain Bohun, left behind, walked side by side. Bessy wore a pretty grey silk and plain white bonnet: she had a small bouquet in her hand that the gardener, Williams, had arranged for her, Ellen Adair was in a similar dress, and looked altogether lovely. Mr. Lea, the clergyman, stood ready, book in hand. The spectators in the church--for the event had got wind at the last moment, as these events almost always do, and many came--rose up with expectation.

Of all the party, the bridegroom alone seemed to suffer from nervousness. His answering voice was low, his words were abrupt. It was the more remarkable, because he was in general so self-contained and calm a man. Bessy, always timid and yielding, spoke with gentle firmness; not a shade of doubt or agitation seemed to cross her. But there occurred a frightful contretemps.

"The ring, if you please," whispered the officiating clergyman to the bridegroom at that part of the service where the ring was needed.

The ring! Oliver Rane felt in his waistcoat-pocket, and went into an agony of consternation. The ring was not there. He must have left it on his dressing-table. The little golden symbol had been wrapped in white tissue paper, and he certainly remembered putting it into his waistcoat-pocket. It was as certainly not there now: and he supposed he must have put it out again.

"I have not got the ring!" he exclaimed hurriedly.

To keep a marriage ceremony waiting while a messenger ran a mile off for the ring and then ran a mile back again, was a thing that had never been heard of............