Though reckoned a melancholy man, Mr. Hooper
had a placid cheerfulness for such occasions, which often excited
a sympathetic smile where livelier merriment would have been
thrown away. There was no quality of his disposition which made
him more beloved than this. The company at the wedding awaited
his arrival with impatience, trusting that the strange awe, which
had gathered over him throughout the day, would now be dispelled.
But such was not the result. When Mr. Hooper came, the first
thing that their eyes rested on was the same horrible black veil,
which had added deeper gloom to the funeral, and could portend
nothing but evil to the wedding. Such was its immediate effect on
the guests that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily from
beneath the black crape, and dimmed the light of the candles. The
bridal pair stood up before the minister. But the bride's cold
fingers quivered in the tremulous hand of the bridegroom, and her
deathlike paleness caused a whisper that the maiden who had been
buried a few hours before was come from her grave to be married.
If ever another wedding were so dismal, it was that famous one
where they tolled the wedding knell.
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