The ecclesiastic's voice droned on, his voice hanging like the hum of some great Insect upon the scented air. It was accomplished, and they were welded each to the other until death should part them.
Down the festooned nave she came on his arm, her step unfaltering, her face calm; black misery in her heart. Behind followed her aunt and cousin and Lord Gervase. On Mr. Wilding's aquiline face a pale smile glimmered, like a beam of moonlight upon tranquil waters, and it abode there until they reached the porch and were suddenly confronted by Nick Trenchard, red of face for once, perspiring, excited, and dust-stained from head to foot.
He had arrived that very instant; and, urged by the fearful news that brought him, he had come resolved to pluck Wilding from the altar be the ceremony done or not. But in that he reckoned without Mr. Wilding--for he should have known him better than to have hoped to succeed. He stepped forward now, and gripped him with his dusty glove by the sleeve of his shimmering bridegroom's coat. His voice came harsh with excitement and smouldering rage.
"A word with you, Anthony!"
Mr. Wilding turned placidly to regard him. "What now?" he asked, his bride's hand retained in the crook of his elbow.
"Treachery!" snapped Trenchard in a whisper. "Hell and damnation! Step aside, man."
Mr. Wilding turned to Lord Gervase, and begged of him to take charge of Mistress Wilding. "I deplore this interruption," he told her, no whit ruffled by what he had heard. "But I shall rejoin you soon. Meanwhile, his lordship will do the honours for me." This last he said with his eyes moving to Lady Horton and her daughter.
Lord Gervase, in some surprise, but overruled by his cousin's calm, took the bride on his arm and led her from the churchyard to the waiting carriage. To this he handed her, and after her her aunt and cousin. Then, mounting himself, they drove away, leaving Wilding and Trenchard among the tombstones, whither the messenger of evil had meanwhile led his friend. Trenchard rapped out his story briefly.
"Shenke," said he, "who was riding from Lyme with letters for you from the Duke, was robbed of his dispatches late last night a mile or so this side Taunton."
"Highwaymen?" inquired Mr. Wilding, his tone calm, though his glance had hardened.
"Highwaymen? No! Government agents belike. There were two of them, he says--for I have the tale from himself--and they met him at the Hare and Hounds at Taunton, where he stayed to sup last night. One of them gave him the password, and he conceived him to be a friend. But afterwards, growing suspicious, he refused to tell them too much. They followed him, it appears, and on the road they overtook and fell upon him; they knocked him from his horse, possessed themselves of the contents of his wallet, and left him for dead--with his head broken."