She rode pillion to church behind a young brother who afterwards said
that the hand which lay on his as she held her arm round his waist was
"cold and damp as marble." "Full of his new dress and the part he acted
in the procession, the circumstance, which he long afterwards remembered
with bitter sorrow and compunction, made no impression on him at the
time."
Great were the festivities that Lord and Lady Stair had prepared for the
wedding of their daughter with so eligible a suitor as the young laird
of Baldoon, and when the ceremony in the church was over, there were
great doings at Carsecreugh. Baldoon must either have been a very stupid
man or a wilfully blind one, for his bride of snow seemed to look on
everything that took place with vacant, unseeing, unsmiling eyes, and
spoke and acted as one in a dream.
In the evening there was a dance. One can see the bright lights, the
gaily-coloured wedding garments of the festive company, hear the sound
of clarionet and of fiddle gaily jigging out country dances, and the
loud hum of talk and laughter of the many guests. Baldoon, a proud
husband, tricked out in all the finery of a bridegroom of that day,
leads out his bride, the beautiful Janet, in her white bridal robe. Can
he not feel the clammy chill of the little hand he takes in his? Why
does he not understand the piteous look in the eyes of the girl whose
feet are treading so gay a measure? No trapped bird with broken wing was
ever more pitiful.
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