A Bride of a Summer’s Day

I

Crash went the bells from All Saints tower; “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,” jangled the bells of old Saint Clement’s in response; and then All Saints fired off its volley again.

The crowd parted, the children scattered their flowers, and the bride passed out of the church leaning on the arm of her newly-made husband.

Very fair to look at was this bride. She was tall and slender in figure, and owned to features that might have been chiselled out of a block of marble, for their faultless regularity. Her complexion was a pure white, with scarce a vestige of colour. Hair of a bright, dark brown; eyes of a deep grey, overarched with long, sweeping eyebrows, that finished in a delicate line on the temples, completed the picture.

This was Ida, elder daughter of George, fifth Baron Culvers, on the day that she was married to her cousin, Captain Sefton Culvers, late of the Royal Hussars.

Between the bride and bridegroom there was just that amount of likeness that might be expected between such near relatives; that is to say, he owned to a figure as tall and lithe as hers, a nose as straight, eyes as large and luminous. But there likeness ended. The look from the girl’s eyes was clear and straightforward; the look from the man’s was neither the one nor the other, and could the long, dark moustache, which hid the lines and curves of his mouth, have been removed, the receding chin and long, uncleft upper lip, which mark the pleasure-loving, vacillating nature, would at once have stood revealed.