Just as I was putting the finishing touches to my hat there came a tapping at my bedroom door. When I cried, "Come in!" to my amazement who should enter but George's best man, Jack Bowles.
"Maud!" he exclaimed. "Whatever's up? Do you know it's nearly two, and George is almost off his head, and the parson's going to a funeral?"
I turned to him with what he has since assured me was the air of a tragedy queen.
"I am ready now. We will start at once."
He stared, as well he might.
"Like that?" he cried.
"Like this. You and I will drive to the church together, and I will explain everything to you as we go." I hurried with him down the staircase, calling to the others as I went; unseen, unnoticed, a quiver passed all over me as I recalled how, in the days gone by, with a prophetic eye, I had seen myself, a vision of snowy white, descend that staircase "with measured step and slow," surrounded by my bridesmaids. "Mamma, I'm going to drive to the church with Mr Bowles. You and Eveleen and Ellen had better follow in another carriage."
"My dear!" mamma's voice came back. "What do you mean? I'm not nearly ready yet."
"Maud!" Eveleen distinctly shouted.
But I waited for nothing; for no one. Hastening to a carriage with Mr Bowles, off we started. It was rather an invidious position; there had been passages with Mr Bowles which made my situation one of some delicacy. When George told me that he had asked him to be his best man, I felt that he was hardly the person I should have chosen for the part. However, I had not quite seen my way to acquaint him with the manner in which Mr Bowles had behaved at Mrs Miller's dance; to speak of nothing else. So there we were alone together perhaps for the last time in our lives. Possibly what had passed between us made him all the quicker to feel for me in the plight in which--as I explained to him--I found myself. He showed the most perfect sympathy. Even George could not have been nicer.