A Transaction in Hearts by Edgar Saltus — Read

Already a handful of guests had filled the sitting-room. In the study, across the hall, Gonfallon, robed in full canonicals, stood motionless and alone. Once only at the champing of bits and the noise of hoofs he had turned to the window. It was Miss Pickett, garmented in that terra-cotta which affects the eye as a pistol-shot affects the ear. He had heard her rustle past the door and her laugh mingle with Mrs. Manhattan's. Then a brougham had stopped, and Tandem, in a cutaway coat, a flower in his buttonhole, had alighted and loitered an instant until Yarde had alighted too. For the moment, Gonfallon, at the possibility of their entering the room where he stood, had knit his brow; but Tandem, in his quality of best man, had convoyed the groom to some other refuge. From above came the sound of hurrying feet. The rectory was articulate, its quiet stirred with vocables. In the room overhead he pictured Claire standing before the glass, her head held sidewise, eying the last touches to her gown. Beyond, somewhere, through the walls he saw Yarde contemplating his fingertips, and to the prayerbook which he held Gonfallon gave a tighter clasp.

Since the dinner and its epilogue Gonfallon had barely seen his sister-in-law. The day after she had gone with the Picketts to Washington, and before returning to New York had managed to pass a full month with Yarde's relatives in the South. Since then her hours had been given to the trousseau. Today she was to be married, and at the ceremony, at her mating to that man, instead of forbidding the banns he was to officiate. It was through him the Church was to sanction a thing against which every fibre of his being rebelled. In an effort to gain some mastery over the expression of his face, he turned again to the street.