This fear, though exaggerated, and indeed
causeless, was the result of too much brooding of late over her own
situation, and of that morbid sensibility in which the most pure and
innocent are, unhappily, the most likely to indulge. The concealment, as
has already been explained, was that of her intended husband, who, with
the subterfuge of an interested spirit, had hoped to mislead the little
circle of his own acquaintances and gratify his cupidity at the cheapest
possible rate to himself. But there is a point of self-abasement beyond
which the perfect consciousness of right rarely permits even the most
timid to proceed. As the bride moved up the lane of human bodies, her eye
grew less disturbed and her step firmer,--for the pride of rectitude
overcame the ordinary girlish sensibilities of her sex, and made her the
steadiest at the very instant that the greater portion of females would
have been the most likely to betray their weakness. She had just attained
this forced but respectable tranquillity, as the bailiff, signing to the
crowd to hush its murmurs and to remain motionless, arose, with a manner
that he intended to be dignified, and which passed with the multitude for
a very successful experiment in its way, to open the business in hand by a
short address.
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